


Toy Soldier

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Series: Trial and Error [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awesome Wanda Maximoff, BAMF Wanda Maximoff, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), HYDRA is a bunch of dicks, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Tony Stark, Sequel, Sequel To World War Me, Sokovia Accords, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Winter Soldier Trial, i hope yall like it, leave me be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-11-20 01:29:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11325846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Tony, unlike Steve, was taking Bucky’s trial far better. There was absolutely no way anyone in their right mind would place him in jail after all that he’s been through and this was coming from someone he personally victimized. There was no real reason for Steve to worry about Bucky’s trial even with the evidence against him because the evidence was faulty. Bucky had been declared fit to stand trial but he certainly hadn’t been in a mentally fit state when he was acting as the Winter Soldier.It didn’t stop Steve from telling everyone and their dog that Bucky wasn’t really Bucky when he was acting as the Soldier. His opinion might have mattered more if the public, against all odds, hadn’t sided with Tony on the issue of the Accords. He suspected that was due to a scathing article one Christine Everhart wrote that had shockingly defended him. Sort of.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh I finally got around to the sequel! I'm hopefully going to have fun with this! Hopefully you guys will like it :)
> 
> Also I am going to write out Christine's article at some point as a part of this series as well. I got that idea from a lovely commenter (whom will be tagged and attached to Christine's article when i find their name in my comments again). So you can also look forward to that (maybe, I don't know).

Tony, unlike Steve, was taking Bucky’s trial far better. There was absolutely no way anyone in their right mind would place him in jail after all that he’s been through and this was coming from someone he personally victimized. Plus Tony was footing the bill for his lawyers and his shrink- between the two there was no way that Bucky would see jail time for actions he had no choice but to follow through on. He was just hoping James would keep his damn mouth shut long enough not to damn Bucky. Sometimes he was too blunt for his own good and not everyone understood that kind of honesty.

Steve though, he was losing his ever loving mind over Bucky’s safety and all this and that. The thing was that Bucky was _fine_ and so was James. Bucky still had that job at that small book store, he was doing a lot better with people and he was even doing better with crowds despite still having a strong aversion to touch. The only person he could handle touch from, and this was a case-by-case thing, was Tony. But he still had all his hobbies and Tony was still enjoying all the fruits of his labor, and James was doing fine despite having to sometimes work Bucky’s job and he also had hobbies. And a dog that both Tony and Bucky hated but James loved Rocco and took him to the park, which was basically the only way he could be assed to leave the house and Tony was told by the therapist that this was a good thing. So they put up with the stupid dog.

There was no real reason for Steve to worry about Bucky’s trial even with the evidence against him because the evidence was faulty. Bucky had been declared fit to stand trial but he certainly hadn’t been in a mentally fit state when he was acting as the Winter Soldier. It didn’t stop Steve from telling everyone and their dog that Bucky wasn’t really Bucky when he was acting as the Soldier. His opinion might have mattered more if the public, against all odds, hadn’t sided with _Tony_ on the issue of the Accords. He suspected that was due to a scathing article one Christine Everhart wrote that had shockingly defended him. Sort of. Christine took a pretty neutral view but her article went a long way in swaying the public and now she was on Bucky’s trial for her latest story.

Steve wanted her the hell away from Bucky (he never mentions James) but Tony knew how important spinning a story was when it came to public support so he contacted Christine. She had reached out to him when some of the dust settled after the Accords and he had given his side of the story. He had full well expected her to railroad him like she had the last time they met after bringing up his Merchant of Death nickname. She didn’t though, she had actually defended him a little but her article had been shockingly critical of Steve. The public had listened and that was why Tony thought to call her. He knew the public would listen to her, and that they trusted her. Her writing could go a _long_ way to convince the American public that Bucky was safe to be around. And, if James was okay with it, she could go a long way in getting the public to understand his presence.

There were two problems with this though. One, Christine Everhart was only out for Christine Everhart. The last time Tony spoke to her he gave her details of the fight between him and Steve, namely what happened in Siberia and after, in confidence. The public didn’t know about the Avengers being in an underwater supermax prison, Steve’s letter, or Bucky’s subsequent shift in custody to Tony until she went and spilled all those details to them. Including actual quotes from Steve’s letter complete with pictures of it. He didn’t know how she got all of that but it was _Christine_ , the woman was a shark. In the end he had to thank her for it though because Steve’s letter was his ultimate undoing. Still though, he couldn’t trust her to keep certain details to herself in regards to Bucky’s case though he might be able to appeal to her sense of journalism by asking her to wait for the right time to release details like James’ identity.

Problem Two was Steve. He didn’t trust her at all but that was because Christine took Tony’s side. And even then Tony would say that _very_ lightly- he counted at least three digs at him in her article so she didn’t think he was right she just didn’t think Steve was either. She was just as quick to criticize Tony’s actions as Steve’s so why Steve felt personally victimized by her he had no idea. Point was he was putting up a fuss with Tony over involving her. In the end he left the decision of whether or not Christine was to be involved up to Bucky and James. Christine was waiting on a call, happy to not only have a scoop, but she had the scoop straight from the source. She was happy to wait when all of her colleagues were scrambling to get close to Bucky with no success.

In the meantime the American and international public were at a loss of what to make of Bucky. Some were quick to condemn him and others were quick to martyr him but no one really had all or even a little bit of the facts. What they had was Steve’s word and thanks to the mess that came of the Accords the general public, _especially_ those over seas, didn’t trust him. They didn’t even hold much more faith in Tony but unlike Steve he was quick to accept it. He knows he’s made mistakes and he was perfectly happy to own up to that the best he can and to try and do better. Steve was having a harder time adjusting and so was Clint in particular. The rest of the Avengers seemed to accept their fates except maybe Sam and Scott but that was because they were new Avengers not because they acted like a man baby the way Clint did. They just weren’t sure where they sat and that was fair.

Bucky’s trial was eclipsing the Avengers as far as activity in the media went though so for now Tony focused on clearing Bucky and James of jail time and then he’d worry about the reputation of the Avengers. Or maybe not. He was thinking or retiring from that group on account of his unexpected and new role as Peter Parker’s mentor. Both Bucky and James found his relationship with him equal parts amusing and heartwarming.

*

Bucky has his feet stretched out into Tony’s lap and he gently rubs them. Bucky had been tense at first but after some time he had relaxed into it and now he was practically purring like Americat. “Sometimes,” Tony says, “when I want to feel better about myself I think about the time I had to explain to Peter what vas deferens were.” Fifteen years old and he didn’t even know his own anatomy, the American education system was a disaster.

“ _What_?” Bucky asks, bursting out laughing.

“Yeah, I had to like… you know, give him the talk. The kid has a high ninety in biology and didn’t even know what his vas deferens were. But it makes me feel better about some of my failures because at least I’ve never mistaken my vas deferens for fallopian tubes.” At his age he was sure Peter was either sexually active or going to be soon, the kid needed to know his bits before he went and _used_ them. Understanding how things worked meant that he was less likely to do something stupid, like get and STI or knock someone up. He didn’t want to find out what weird shit Peter’s biology would do when passed on to spawn. He was fairly certain May wouldn’t want to find out that her spiderling produced more spiderlings either. She didn’t even know that her spiderling _was_ a spiderling at the moment.

“You gave Peter a sex talk?” Bucky asks, still giggling like mad.

“I did and it was very painful but he learned what his parts were doing and sat through a very uncomfortable lesson with diagrams. And then I had to ask- for science- if his wrists were the only things that shot webs.” He figured that Peter keeping his identity secret may require abstinence on his part if his webbing came out of more uh… _unlikely_ places. It had been deeply uncomfortable for everyone involved but Peter had stammered out that no, that was not a problem and Tony let the subject drop because he already knew more than he needed to about the kid’s masturbation habits. Or sex habits. He didn’t care either way, he didn’t want that information, it was just an uncomfortable question he needed to get out of the way before Peter called him freaking out because he jizzed someone to the wall by accident.

Bucky leans forward and starts laughing so hard he stopped making noise. Americat was not happy with being jostled and meows at Bucky, annoyed, but resettles by Bucky’s feet so Tony could pet her too. “Oh my god you asked Peter if his dick shot webs? That’s the funniest thing I have ever heard. FRIDAY, do you have video evidence of this?” he asks. She does and she sends it to Bucky’s tablet for him to watch.

Tony sits back and listens to his own matter-of-fact biology lesson after his exasperation at Peter for not knowing what his damn vas deferens were and then… Well and then he hears things go silent for a solid twenty seconds before he hears himself ask about Peter’s web abilities. And bless the poor child he didn’t realize what Tony meant at first, which only makes Bucky laugh harder. “When I see Peter next I am _so_ bringing this up,” he says, cackling.

“No you are not, he was so embarrassed! Don’t you make fun of him to his face, do it behind his back like a normal human! Also can you make those cherry chip cupcakes again? Peter ate most of them and I liked those,” he says. Damn kid must have worked up an appetite when Tony accidentally embarrassed him when he asked about his webs because he ate a dozen of Bucky’s cupcakes. Or he ate them because they were fantastic, it was hard to tell.

“Yeah I can make those cupcakes again but I make no guarantees about Peter’s lack of biology knowledge,” he says, grinning at Tony. It was hard to stay mad at that face so Tony grins back.

*

After knowing James for long enough Tony figured he could tell when the guy was angry but even a novice like, Steve for example, could tell. “This is just a meeting, James, nothing is going to come of this,” Tony assures him. The lawyer just needed information and Steve had insisted on coming along, which is what Tony _thinks_ James is mad about but he isn’t totally sure.

“I don’t care about that,” he snaps. “When the hell were you going to tell me it’s acceptable to be a Nazi now?”

Steve winces and nods, “oh, you found out about that. I’m not impressed either,” he says in sympathy.

“Oh shut up,” James snaps at him, “Tony you need to tell people it isn’t acceptable to be a Nazi. I didn’t get tortured for seventy fucking years by Nazis for them to be socially acceptable!”

That hadn’t been what Tony expected at all. “Uh, pretty sure I regularly denounce Nazis James. I actively kick HYDRA’s ass all the time.” Less so than normal but that was due to a new draft of the Accords being thrown together though this time T’Challa was heading them instead of his father. That had to be hard for him but he was pushing through. This time though the Avengers were all involved in the making given that T’Challa had pointed out that they knew all their capabilities and how to properly place laws around them best. Tony had made sure to put so much stipulations on the usage of his suits that there was no way anyone, namely Ross, could get their grimy little paws on them.

“Do you know people are arguing that HYDRA isn’t a bunch of Nazis? What the hell do they think HYDRA is if they aren’t Nazis? Why the hell am I being put on trial where there are people who think Nazis are okay? _They_ should have the court date,” he mumbles, glaring out the window.

Tony sighs because he isn’t exactly wrong and the strange swing in favor of HYDRA lately _was_ going to complicate Bucky’s trial. Maybe they weren’t exactly the organization that they were but they were a hate group still, it was hardly like they got _better_ with age. Bucky would know, James too. “People are confused-” Tony starts but James cuts him off.

“People are disgusting! What the hell is confusing about ‘Nazis are bad’?” James waves an arm around and he sort of had Tony there.

“People have forgotten what things were like, Bucky. Most people alive now weren’t there and those that were are on death’s doorstep minus us,” Steve says. Of course what sense his words were making was completely lost when he called James ‘Bucky’.

“I. Am. Not. Bucky,” he snarls at Steve.

“No you aren’t, but he still makes a point. Take a breath and calm down because you’re going to scare the shit put of the poor lawyer who is not, by the way, a neo- Nazi. That I can assure you,” Tony says. HYDRA was still sniffing around Bucky and he had yet to remember anything they’d want. But they were putting an awful lot of effort into obtaining him so it must be something good, something top secret. He had to wonder what that was when the five other Winter Soldiers had already been caught and killed thanks to Zemo. Still it meant Tony did extensive research on anyone who came into contact with Bucky outside his job to make sure, for certain, that there were no connections to HYDRA.

He’s removed people from Bucky’s legal team because their great uncle’s cousin was related to someone who was maybe a Nazi; he knew for sure no one who was working this case had any HYDRA connections. And he probably broke like five hundred laws to get that information but no one needed to know that. His words do get James to relax a little though even if he was still obviously agitated. “I can’t believe people defend Nazis,” he mumbles, “or rename them to make them sound less disgusting. People think I’m a villain but they’re out there defending _Nazis_. Unbelievable.”

Tony could hardly argue that. Steve remains suspiciously silent the rest of the way to the lawyer’s office and Tony knows it won’t last so he just waits until James leaves to go do whatever it was the lawyer needed for Steve to speak.

“You have been keeping an eye on HYDRA, right?” he asks, eyes intense.

Tony takes offense that he obviously didn’t trust him that much despite being proven to be considerably better for Bucky _and_ James than him. “Yes, I have been keeping an eye on all things HYDRA. I’ve even sifted through a whole lot of their records breaking encryptions to try and figure out what it is they want out of Bucky’s head.” Or James’, it would be hard to say which one had the information they wanted or if they both knew. Even Wanda was helping though her tech ability was a long ways from Tony’s. She still had vital insider knowledge that they’ve used on encryptions more than once to crack them.

“Just making sure. We can’t afford to have things go sideways for Bucky with this trial going on and the public… I don’t know what the public thinks,” he says eventually, rubbing his temples.

“The public doesn’t know what to think. They don’t know enough about him. All they know is that he decimated Washington trying to kill you, he was brainwashed, I tried to kill him for killing my parents but obviously changed my mind about him obviously, and that he used to be your best friend. That’s not really enough to form much of an opinion,” Tony points out. He couldn’t blame them for being confused with that little to go off of.

“I _am_ his best friend,” Steve says.

“What?” Tony asks, not sure where Steve got that.

“You said I _was_ his best friend, past tense. I _am_ his best friend, present tense,” Steve says, voice hard.

Tony raises an eyebrow but he doesn’t respond. If he had to give anyone that label it’d be Wanda, not Steve. Bucky was on precarious terms with him and James still outright hated the guy. That was hardly what made a friendship, he’d know considering he actually knew things about having a best friend thanks to Rhodey. Actually at this point even Bucky, Rhodey, and James were better friends than Steve was with Bucky or James. But he knew how hard Steve was still clinging to the past no matter how much he promised to let go and Tony has been there too, holding on to emotional hurt for too long and letting it screw everything up. It wasn’t pleasant to go through but he can’t help but be a little vindicated that for once it was Steve that was the screw up, not him.

James exits the room some time later looking like he was in a much better mood, which is confirmed when he and the lawyer exchange a few jokes before he walks back over to Tony. “Ready to go?” he asks, ignoring Steve altogether.

“If you are,” Tony says. “How did it go?” he asks before Steve can. James was in a better mood and Steve asking questions wasn’t going to keep him that way so Tony asks what Steve was going to to keep him quiet and James in a good mood.

“Good, I think. Better than I expected it to go anyways so there’s that. Can we get Dairy Queen?” he asks. Tony laughs and shakes his head but agrees because he could use something sweet too. Even if the fat he was beginning to accumulate around his gut was telling him he should probably lay off the sweets.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't going to update today but then I was like nah be nice to your readers so here you guys go! Bucky goes from loving memes to making them. Poor Peter.

James was no stranger to nightmares. Bucky got them more, probably because he felt guiltier or maybe because he felt more in general but he got them too. So did Tony but it was still uncomfortable telling him about them, maybe because the dreams were almost always about his mother. His therapist has informed him that it was apparently some subconscious guilt over killing the woman and _then_ he saw why Tony had so little faith in the science. He’s never felt guilty for killing Maria he doubted he spontaneously felt guilt now. Thankfully he didn’t need as much sleep as the average human so when he had sleepless nights it wasn’t as big of a deal as it was when Tony didn’t sleep well. Age was also a factor in the affects on Tony’s body but he didn’t like thinking about that. Tony aged like a normal human and he… didn’t. It wasn’t exactly comfortable to think of Tony dying long before he would.

It gave him something of a new appreciation for Steve’s situation though it didn’t make up for the way he clung to Bucky and snubbed James. He loved Tony, more than he would probably love anything the rest of his life, but Tony had a right to his own life. It shouldn’t matter that there would almost certainly be a time in which he was alive and Tony wasn’t, he had no right to smother Tony until he actively wanted away from him. And Bucky _did_ want away from Steve. James could understand Rogers’ worry for Bucky but even if he went to jail he’s undoubtedly suffered worse than that stupid supermax prison Bucky helped bust the Avengers out of. Neither he nor Bucky would care if they had no privacy and a bunch of security; it was still infinitely better than what HYDRA had to offer. Hell, most detention centers were nicer than HYDRA was so jail wasn’t much of a worry to him or Bucky. Bucky thought he deserved to be there anyways. James, not so much but he’s been reliably informed that he’s selfish and he was fine with that.

“Hey um… are there any books here on the Winter Soldier?” some random teen asks, drawing him out of his thoughts. He stares at her for a solid ten seconds before he decides she’s a fucking idiot for not knowing she was _talking_ to the Winter Soldier.

“Nope. No one knew the guy existed due to being a ghost story until like five years ago but there’s plenty of stuff on Bucky Barnes,” he says in a snappy tone. He hated this job but Bucky was fond of keeping books. He liked the organization of it, and the quiet. James would have preferred something that actually used his body instead of sitting around all day or cleaning some books but whatever. Bucky always got what he wanted over James.

“Okay, and where would I find those?” the kid asks and he barely keeps from rolling his eyes.

“Right by the Captain America section given that ‘B’ comes before ‘C’,” he says but the teen is so wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice his snappy tone.

“Well I wanted to read up on the guy since that trial is coming up and I guess there’s all kinds of evidence and stuff against him. What do you think?” she asks, leaning half over the counter he was sitting behind with interest in her eyes.

What _did_ he think indeed. “I think anyone who was a ghost story didn’t leave much evidence behind,” he says logically. All evidence he did leave behind, which wasn’t much, was collected by HYDRA.

“But they must have enough for a case,” she reasons.

“But is it enough for a conviction? Besides, anyone who knows anything about HYDRA knows a guy would do anything they wanted with enough torture. Barnes was there for seventy years and Nazis are hardly known for being pleasant. People are delusional if they think they wouldn’t have ended up with the same fate.” He’s surprised to find he believes the words. He knew men who broke with less torture than Bucky given that he’s done his fair share of torture. Bucky held up surprisingly well, better than most everyone. Tony is the only person that he could think of that might have been able to withstand something like that and that was only because Tony would be smart enough to either figure out an escape plan or a plan to kill himself. Maybe Steve too, but even the two of them would have their breaking points. No, actually Steve’s breaking point was _Bucky_. Kill him and the man would be too destroyed to even resist. Tony was more difficult, he was used to being alone and betrayed.

“You think so? I don’t know, I mean didn’t he admit to killing all those people?” she asks.

Why was he discussing his trial with some teen that was too stupid to see she was debating the trial with the guy who was being _tried_? “People forgave Maximoff,” he points out. And Wanda did worse things than him if only because she was _willing_ to do them and did them with little to no coercion. He never joined willingly and there were plenty of times when his conditioning slipped and he did what he wanted. Or Bucky did.

“Guess you got a point there. Not sure they should have,” she says.

“No one should trust anyone who willingly joined HYDRA no matter the reason,” he says honestly. He put up with Wanda because Bucky didn’t hate her even if he was leery around her and she and Tony had a tentative friendship that made her the Avengers go between. And even _she_ thought they weren’t fair to Tony despite the fact that being around him was sometimes still hard for her. That, at least, he could understand. It was the rest of her story that baffled him.

“You don’t believe her apology then? She was pretty adamant about it,” the teen says.

She was, Bucky had watched and James had rewatched the video of it later to make sure he caught it all. He had. But, “apologizing for willingly joining a Nazi organization seems a bit weak doesn’t it? She claimed she wanted to avenge her family, which would be noble if she didn’t join a hate group that was well known for destroying families. Guess family only mattered to her if it was her own,” he says in too bitter of a tone. The teen notices and raises an eyebrow.

“Sounds like you’ve been personally victimized by her,” she says.

“Shit at this point I’ve ben personally victimized by most of the Avengers but mostly Sam fucking Wilson.” Both he and Bucky had an irrational hate for the guy. Objectively he was perfectly agreeable and actually seemed like a nice guy even if he was stupid enough to take everything people said about Tony at face value. Subjectively though? James was waiting for an opportunity to rip his wings off again. Sam Wilson was the actual _worst_.

The teen’s eyebrows shoot up again, “Sam Wilson? Falcon right? What’d _he_ do?”

“Have a stupid face,” James answers before he can stop himself. “The hatred is completely irrational and I know it but every time I see his stupid face I half wish a bird would shit on him. Preferably a falcon for giving them a terrible name.” That’d just be priceless. If his luck was _really_ good it’d land right on the top of Sam’s head.

The teen laughs and shakes her head, “I don’t think I’ve ever even _met_ someone who didn’t like Falcon. Guess you learn something new everyday. Anyways I’m going to go find those books so thanks!” she says in a freakishly cheerful tone and she flounces off to go find books on Barnes. Ten bucks says she wouldn’t even recognize him after seeing pictures either. For all the fear that surrounded the Winter Solder no one knew when he was sitting right in front of them. Hell, if Bucky hadn’t panicked when he was picking up those stupid plums they probably wouldn’t have noticed it was him then either. All he had to do was scoff at the possibility that _he_ could be the Winter Soldier. It was hardly like they had a distinctive face, not like Tony. He’d know Tony’s face anywhere. They were more… conspicuous.

He picks up his murder mystery novel and continues reading it while the teen browses the small bookshop, eventually pulling a few books about Bucky down from the shelves. She flips through them and he mostly ignores her in favor of the plot of his book. It was about an assassin spy too and he was having fun pointing out the inaccuracies to himself. “Hey,” the teen says, approaching him after another half hour browsing books. “Have you noticed that you kind of look like Bucky Barnes?” she asks.

James snorts, “every moderately good looking white guy with dark hair and blue eyes looks like Bucky Barnes. Chris Pine looks like Bucky Barnes,” he says in a scathing enough tone that she notices.

“I mean I guess but you look _exactly_ like him,” she says, holding up one of the three books she has, making a comparison. James got the feeling she was doubting herself now because he didn’t look like he did in the forties. But just in case he pulls up a picture of Henry Cavill because he looked similar to that dude too.

“See, every moderately attractive white dude with dark hair and blue eyes looks exactly like Bucky Barnes,” he says and the teen leans in to look at the picture, comparing it to the book.

“Oh man you’re right. That is _so_ weird!”

“Yeah, it’s like one of those multiverse things,” he says, remembering one of those stupid memes Bucky loved. Judging from the look on the teen’s face he didn’t use it correctly but whatever. Maybe she’d think he was nuts and she’d leave him be. To be fair she’d be right given the whole having another person in his head.

When she walks away he feels Bucky stir a little in his mind before he spits out a weak _are you fucking kidding me_? Yeah that’s right, James thinks, you could have had your stupid ass plums and he wouldn’t have had to worry about Steve or breaking all his meager belongings in that stupid backpack. Usually Bucky didn’t talk to him, he was generally considered the weaker personality out of the two like the host personality usually was, but he was learning. James thought that was mostly due to his increasing mental stability.

*

He still has to do therapy, which pisses Bucky off because Tony decided he didn’t need therapy anymore but he couldn’t decide that. He thought he was doing fine but even his therapist thought he should stick with it. The good news, he guesses, is that James was also improving and when he asks about that he’s told James has a totally different set of issues than him.

“So,” Bucky says, “to get this straight my mental health issue has mental health issues? God, its like a matryoshka doll in there,” he says, pointing at his own head.

The therapist laughs, “something like that yes. But you’re both improving,” she tells him.

“Lovely. So when can I leave this because I feel fine, even with the trial coming up,” he says. It was a far cry from how he used to be when he first got to Tony’s. Remembering things from that time was like remembering the life of a totally different man. Choices didn’t overwhelm him now, James wasn’t forced to take care of them both, and he had almost no problem saying no to things he had no interest in anymore. That last bit had been hard and sometimes it still was, mostly with Tony, but that was because he liked Tony and it was still hard for him to risk disappointment. After seventy years of being tortured every time he refused or failed to meet someone’s expectations it was hard to learn how to say no again. Especially if he genuinely wanted to please that person- like Tony.

Somewhat ironically Tony responded the best to being told no anyways though Wanda was a close second. Regaining his trust hadn’t been easy for her and truthfully he was still leery of her but he wondered if that was James’ anxiety instead of his own. He still held a lot of hostility towards her. He also still hated Steve but that was at least partially because he was awful at respecting Bucky’s boundaries. Tony had learned to read his body language and often told Steve to fuck off himself. It was worse because Bucky genuinely didn’t think Steve intended to break his boundaries and he didn’t think Steve was intentionally not listening either. Bucky thought of all the people who had either gotten therapy or were getting therapy Steve was the one who needed it the most. Bucky was adjusting okay and even James was too, and with time Tony would settle from his traumas but Steve? He was still having a hard time seeing past himself.

James wasn’t nearly as easy on Steve as Bucky was but he had problems with seeing things in nuanced ways so Bucky mostly ignored his opinions. Tony was more patient in teaching him how to think critically about things than Bucky would have been. Mostly he let James think whatever he wanted because he was going to think what he believed anyways. Steve wasn’t a subject James would ever change his opinion on anyways and Tony didn’t even try. Probably because they agreed on him even though Tony was gracious enough to mostly keep his opinions from Bucky. He knew Bucky was trying to make some kind of connection with Steve but it was hard when Steve only saw what he wanted to in Bucky- namely by ignoring James altogether and James was not the type to be ignored.

“Bucky, you have a lot of things to work through and doing good doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready to leave therapy. Besides, James could certainly use more time,” she says.

That they could agree on. He still hated crowds, snapped on anyone who even _hinted_ at hurting children, and had a difficult time socializing. Bucky thought that last one was because he’s an asshole though and he didn’t think therapy would fix his natural state. “I guess so but I feel like I’m doing fine so,” he trails off and lets her come to her own conclusions.

“Are you still having nightmares?” she asks and he glares at her. Of course she knew about that and decided to use it against him. “I may not have a lot of faith in dream reading as far as the pop culture uses of it go but they _do_ sometimes tell us things about our waking lives that we might not notice otherwise. Take Tony’s sleep habits for example- the man is one of the most successful people in the world but his inability to sleep suggests that his body and mind are trying to tell him something he isn’t willing to address. The same goes for you.”

She might be right about Tony but he figured the nightmares were just a normal reaction to being tortured for seventy years, which the therapist agrees with. PTSD was a natural reaction to being through the kinds of things he’s been through but it was a reaction he needed to work through according to her. Plus there was James’ being terribly adjusted to everything but Tony.

“I’m just tired of feeling broken,” he says finally. James was the strong one and he was the weak one and everyone knew it. Bucky has never liked being weak and he was tired of people treating him with kid gloves. Even Tony did it sometimes, usually regarding touch given that he still wasn’t fond of contact of any sort, and it drove him up the wall.

The therapist laughs though there isn’t much humor in it. “Bucky, the rate of mental illness is roughly one in four and _everyone_ has something that’s just a little bit off mentally. Luckily for a lot of people that doesn’t result in a mental illness but no one is one hundred percent together one hundred percent of the time. Most people just aren’t brave enough to admit that even to themselves.”

Bucky gives her an incredulous look, “admitting your broken is bravery now? Yeah, okay.” That sounded totally fake but sure.

“In a world that demands absolute excellence to the point of pushing your boundaries past the breaking point, yes. The society we live in glorifies working yourself into the ground because too much leisure is considered laziness. Our society dislikes anyone who is idle for too long so when a person admits that they can’t handle what is demanded of them yes, that’s bravery. It’s hard to not be able to live up to the expectations that are put on you but it’s even harder to admit that you aren’t capable of ever reaching those standards,” she says.

He hadn’t thought of that but he thinks of Tony’s schedule, about everything that he does. He didn’t sleep nearly as much as he should and even without being a CEO he was still heavily involved in his company. Then there was the Avengers and all that legal drama, and Bucky’s legal drama too. He set everything up for both cases and was funding Bucky’s. He was the one who communicated the most with T’Challa regarding the new version of the Accords and he was the one who communicated with Wanda to tell the rest of the Avengers. Then there was Peter’s suits, his own suits, helping Peter out when he handled criminals Tony deemed more dangerous than average. That didn’t include the rest of the mentoring he did for Peter and he’s seen him help Peter with _homework_. He also had a relationship with _two_ people in one body and that couldn’t be easy.

There was no way Bucky could even handle a quarter of that but the therapist has a point- people hailed Tony as a hero for doing all that he did. He was held up as a standard when he was more than an exception and at great personal cost. And Tony wasn’t any more whole than he was. He thinks of the way Tony dropped therapy and reconsiders the bravery in admitting you had a problem.

“I don’t think admitting you have issues is as brave as actually dealing with them,” he says finally. Steve, Bucky thinks, could benefit from doing both before it did more than wreck a relationship he had with an old friend. Tony too but he at least tried to make changes in a way Steve decidedly doesn’t. He wonders if he could talk either one of them into doing something tangible about their issues. Steve might not have Tony’s money to buy therapy but there had to be someone out there who would think treating Captain America’s health issues was cool enough that they’d do it for a reduced fee. Or free.

*

Bucky watches as Tony goes through Peter’s suit’s upgrades with him and grins, sensing a good opportunity here. “So Peter, your webs,” he says and Peter turns beet red even though there was no evidence he knew about Tony’s awkward line of questioning concerning his webs and uh… _other_ places they could come out. “Can you sneeze webs? Because it’d be pretty awkward if you sneezed a classmate to the wall trying to study for your history test or something.” He grins because he damn well knows he’s making both Tony and Peter deeply uncomfortable but it was amusing to watch their non-verbal communication patterns as they tried to deal with this.

“I- I can’t sneeze webs,” Peter finally says, still red in the face.

“So anyways lets leave the webs behind because I updated the eyes on this thing to better respond to the sensory input around you to help your concentration in the field-” Tony would have continued on but Bucky cuts him off.

“Imagine if you could fart webs. I mean there goes the one cheek sneak,” he says and Tony snorts, covering his mouth before Peter could see his laughter.

Peter’s eyes go wide, “ _you_!” he says in an accusatory tone.

“Me?” Bucky asks, feigning innocence.

“You made that meme!” Peter looks at _Tony_ this time, accusation in his eyes because the ‘were do the webs come out’ business was all his fault. Which was true. Bucky never would have considered Peter’s webs or the potential meme content there if it wasn’t for Tony’s awkward sex ed lesson for Peter.

“Why are you looking at me if Bucky made some meme?” Tony asks. He looks kind of like a kicked puppy, which is adorable.

“You told him about the… webs,” Peter mumbles awkwardly.

“Kid, you didn’t know what your vas deferens were, I had to tell _someone_. Come on, what do they teach you in school? What does Aunt May teach you at home? I couldn’t just keep that to myself,” Tony says in his own defense.

“You promised me you wouldn’t tell anyone!” Peter says, offended.

“Bucky doesn’t count, he’s like FRIDAY. Free game. Or like you telling Aunt May stuff minus the Spider-Man thing,” Tony says.

“I don’t tell Aunt May _that_ kind of stuff!” Peter insists.

“Well duh, but you did tell her about James and that is _beyond_ top secret. Most government agencies don’t even know about that so I feel like you have done far worse secret telling than me and I should get let off the hook for this meme thing,” Tony says, hands up in his defense.

“Fine but only because I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about James and I had to tell like fifty lies to explain how I knew that. Most of them about you. Aunt May thinks you’re a bad influence. Sorry. But he made a meme about my webs!” Peter says, pointing at Bucky. “Wait, _FRIDAY_ knows about the web thing! That’s three people, Tony!”

“Two people and an AI and both of those people are in one body so I mean it isn’t like I told _both_ of them they just relayed the information to each other, I can’t help if they’re chatty Cathy’s. Not my fault,” Tony says lightly.

They argue back and forth for a good twenty minutes before Tony finally asks to see the meme that spawned this war. Peter is deeply offended when Tony laughs at Spider-Man sneezing criminals to the wall with web snot and apologizing. This had gone viral not that Bucky expected it and then people made all kinds of spin offs, including Spider-Man farting webs, which was admittedly hilarious because it was based on how spiders actually work. Which Tony points out when Peter gets offended again.

“Why would I shoot webs out of my butt! What use would that be? I’d have to swing around New York by my ass!” Peter says, throwing his hands up in frustration. This makes Tony double over laughing and Bucky makes a mental note to draw an ‘anatomically correct’ Spider-Man swinging around like a spider would.

“I mean spiders _do_ make webs out of their butts. Well, glands on the abdomen but they’re by the spider’s butt so it counts. It’s not that far fetched,” Tony says and starts laughing all over again. Bucky had to admit the image of Peter swinging around either by shooting webs out of his sides or ass was pretty amusing. And very spider-esk, which was his whole shtick in Tony’s defense.

“Peter stop making the poor guy laugh, he has heart problems,” Bucky tells him. He’s still snickering himself but he didn’t have to worry about heart attacks like Tony. “Also have you ever told anyone that your powers let you talk to spiders? I mean the papers dubbed you ‘Spider-Man because of the webs but no one actually knows if you can talk to spiders or not. I mean like we know you can’t but I bet that’ll scare criminals away,” Bucky says.

Peter rolls his eyes, “yesterday I stopped a bank robbery. I highly doubt ‘I’ll sic my spiders on you’ would have stopped them,” he says sarcastically.

Tony starts laughing all over again, doubling over as he tries to regain control over himself. “You should try that!”

“I am not going to put people in danger because I decided to tell the criminal of the week that I can control spiders,” Peter says. He gives them a _look_ but all it does is make Tony laugh harder. Bucky does his best to make note of every spider-based meme he could make about Peter just for fun.

“I’ll get you back for this!” Peter tells him, narrowing his eyes at Bucky.

He snorts, “I’m shivering, kid.”


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes James touches Tony just because it’s the only thing he has that Bucky doesn’t. It’s the one thing he gets that he didn’t have to share with anyone and it always made him feel better. It was selfish to want Tony to himself he knows, especially given their history, but he wasn’t Steve. He never claimed to be anything he wasn’t so he was fine with being selfish. To be fair Tony was fine with this too, always happy to curl closer like he was scared that if he broke contact he’d lose James. Sometimes he did it with Rhodes too but it wasn’t the same with him. With Rhodes it was more like he worried that he’d crumble or something, which was fair given his leg situation. He wondered if Tony would figure out the War Machine armor like he was trying to.

Tony tips his head up at him and smiles, “what is it that’s on your mind, James? Looks like things are running a mile a minute up there.”

They always were but he doesn’t tell Tony that. “I was thinking of you,” he says honestly. When lying, which he was likely about to do, it was always best to stick with half-truths. It made the lies easier to follow later. He disliked telling people about his feelings the therapist notwithstanding. That was just professionalism- it was her job to deal with the mess that was his head. Tony on the other hand, well his own mind was a mess he didn’t need James’ mess too. He and Bucky were in agreement on that.

“Lovely. Nothing interesting then,” he says.

James’ jaw clenches at this. Tony doesn’t look bothered or annoyed but he never did when he made those kinds of jokes. Bucky made them too but James didn’t care about Bucky. “You’re plenty interesting. Trust me, I’ve spent _weeks_ people watching just to make sure I can blend in with a crowd before. I could find you anywhere no matter how crowded.” Its true actually because Tony had… James wasn’t sure how to word it; it was like energy around him that made him… noticeable. Maybe he wouldn’t have to lie about what was on his mind after all.

“You’re biased,” Tony tells him, laughing just a little because he actually believed that.

“If you wanted me to prove my point I could. There are some people that are just impossible to ignore because of the way they shine. You’re one of them.” He’s the only one James has met actually. Steve was the closest he had to an experience like Tony and James was certain that was only because he hated the guy so much he had a hyperawareness of him. But people were drawn to Steve like they were Tony because, like Tony, he had some kind of presence. People valued his leadership if Bucky’s memories of the Commandos served right. Steve had been a different man then though, and a totally different man before the serum. Bucky hadn’t been fond of the change when it happened and he continued to lack that fondness even now.

“Pretty sure you are too. Ever noticed the way people flock to you when you’re out in public? They don’t do that with Bucky,” Tony says. He can see Tony considering this, analyzing it like he did near everything he came into contact with. James wasn’t sure how true that was given that people liked Bucky better than him. He couldn’t blame them given how moody he was. Sometimes, though, it was hard to control his emotions because he wasn’t used to having them. Bucky has always been the more emotional one, he was the one with cold, calculating logic and now he was more than that. Some days it was enough to knock him off his feet.

“Not so sure about that. Bucky is more approachable than I am.” Which was probably why he was the one with the job and not James. He just showed up sometimes because Bucky was expected. There were a couple coworkers he had that suspected something was up but most weren’t that perceptive and those that were didn’t work with him nearly enough to know why his presence was tipping them off. The bookstore was small; generally there was only one person there at a time so he didn’t _have_ to worry about coworkers. Sometimes he wondered if Bucky did that on purpose given that he disliked crowds while Bucky actually liked people or if it was because Bucky sometimes got overwhelmed by people too. Most days he didn’t much care either way.

“Maybe, but he’s more socially awkward than you are. And you’re a risk taker. Take it from someone who knows, people _love_ risk takers because they like to live vicariously through them. Also both of you are hot, that helps,” Tony throws in and James laughs.

“Bucky’s attractiveness goes down five points every time he wears that hideous ‘Tony Stark Sparkle’ shirt.” He had bought it some time ago when Tony had given them both permission to buy clothes they actually liked. Bucky might lament about his leather but he wore shit with memes on it so he couldn’t possibly criticize _James_ ’ choices in clothes. He had a shirt with the entire script of the Bee Movie on it and _loved_ it and he had the audacity to care about _leather_? Heathen.

“I think it’s cute,” Tony admits softly.

 _See_ Bucky thinks at him and James rolls his eyes.

“You’re both a pair of fucking savages.” No one should wear that ugly ‘Tony Stark Sparkle’ shirt. Once, because Bucky hated him, he managed to get Rocco, James’ large Rottweiler, into his terrible ‘Tony Stark Sparkle’ sweater and when James had come back he had to rescue his poor animal from the fashion travesty. As revenge he dressed Americat up in a Captain America costume for pets, shield and all. Bucky had been pissed but he started it, James was just making sure his animal was never left in something so hideous again. So far Rocco was safe.

*

Wanda knew how HYDRA functioned given that she’d been part of it for years so she keeps track of the information the Avengers were getting from them. Every day for a set period of time she tuned into various frequencies that they used to communicate and noted what they were talking about. Mostly it was all information on new leaders, failed leaders, new members, experiments, and recruiting enhanced people. Her notes on the subject were articulate and well maintained so she could keep the information straight and so she could relay that information to the proper authorities.

She disliked Ross more than Tony did but she had to admit his teams were efficient and well put together. They were mostly in charge of tracking and taking out HYDRA bases in place of the Avengers in part because it made sense to conserve the power the Avengers had together. The tactical decision she agreed with, Ross as the head of making those tactical decisions she did not. He kept going on and _on_ about Bruce Banner and Thor being missing. While it was true that Bruce was missing Thor was not. He was in Asgard and she would appreciate if he shut up about it. She can’t say anything about this to him though because she was doing a good job of mostly keeping her head down and her ears alert. Petty squabbles were not what was needed right now, removal of HYDRA and figuring out their plans with Bucky was.

Steve was always the most adamant about her using her expertise to help Bucky, something that surprised exactly no one, but she wondered about his mind. When she was pulled away from her task- sometimes Ross’ strike teams needed help and given that she and Vision were the most powerful of the Avengers they were called on the most- Steve would get antsy. Wanda wonders if Bucky’s continued distance from him was contributing to this. They had made an arrangement long ago for weekly dates she supposed they were, but even she could tell Bucky was distant when he went. She thinks its because of the pressure Steve is unknowingly putting on Bucky. James would have never put up with it but Bucky was more open to emotions than he was and so Wanda was pretty sure he was trying to give Steve a chance.

It wasn’t going well anyways, especially since Bucky was starting to back out of their weekly visits. Steve had initially blamed Tony but Wanda told him that Tony rarely mentioned him and when he did it was usually to James. Tony, from her insights into his mind, was doing his best to give Bucky a chance to form his own opinion on Steve outside of his. He was aware that Bucky was prone to latch onto things that the people around him liked or disliked regardless of his own feelings on the subject. It was how he ended up eating spaghetti at least once a week despite loathing the food simply because Tony and Wanda loved it. She had no idea what Bucky did to it but it tasted better than any spaghetti she cooked and she wouldn’t trust Tony to cook anything.

Still, Steve’s analysis made no sense and continued a pattern that she’d been concerned with for some time now. While he was happy to blame Tony for things he rarely took responsibility for his own problems, and he liked to absolve everyone else of their problems too. When he _did_ admit to his mistakes he didn’t do much about it. This was what had caused him to blame Tony solely for Ultron while Bruce had a role to play in it too, and Wanda’s vision was the motivation for the AI. It was a stupid decision on Tony’s part nonetheless, but it was not his decision alone. It was also what encouraged him to call her a child, which only encouraged Tony to treat her like one, and for her to act like one. She is not a child, she is a grown woman and she should act as such. There is no excusing her actions for most of her life. James was right to tell her that she had no right to hate Tony for hurting her family when she joined a _Nazi_ organization.

She wasn’t the only one Steve excused either and it annoyed Wanda. She would be the first to admit that Tony was not in a place to be making decisions- most of them end badly- but that was no excuse for everyone else to act like they are blameless for their actions. Wanda is certain that this attitude is what is driving Bucky away but she isn’t sure he even knows how to word his worries. She leaves it alone though because she didn’t want Bucky to accidentally become reliant on her to think for him. Technically she knew his feelings on everything, it was the nature of her power, but he needed to figure out how to deal with those emotions himself.

The HYDRA radios tell her nothing new for most of the time she’s on them jotting notes on their actions until near the end of the time she was monitoring today.

“Spider Two, come in,” a new voice says over the comms she tapped into. She frowns, Spider Two?

“Spider Three here Two is down, what’s going on?” someone else says. Wanda’s first thought is Spider-Man but she knew these voices didn’t belong to Peter and he swore up and down he was the only one bit by the spider. He had also been very freaked out when Wanda knew who he was but she’s a mind reader. She knew who _everyone_ was.

“Have you found a way in yet?” the first person asks.

“Negative. Stark is good, I’ll give him that,” the second person- Spider Three- says.

Spider whatever the first number the first person was snorts, “good? Stark is better than good, he’s the best. I used to work for the guy and trust me, this isn’t going to be easy.” Wanda starts writing furiously, noting that this person used to work for Tony and knew of his work. That really didn’t narrow the list.

“Maybe you should be doing _my_ job then,” Spider Three says.

“I’ve got better things to do. Find a way to get in,” Spider Leader says and that’s it. Wanda debates on throwing the radio out of frustration but she resists just barely.

She had things to figure out. Like one- who was the Spider who used to work for Tony? Two- what exactly of Tony’s were they trying to break into? And Three- what was the end goal? Given her previous information HYDRA was tittering about Bucky still, and mostly unaware of James, so it could have something to do with him. But it was best to keep their options open, especially when they were considering what the Spiders were trying to break into. It could be a physical building or it could be an encrypted file or something, who knew with Tony. The point was that she needed to get this information to him _now_ so she gets up and leaves, headed to the Tower.

*

Tony is tired, more so than normal given that he was trying to track some rando who used to work for him at an unknown time. He’s also fielding questions from Bucky and James’ lawyer, he had to reschedule one of Bucky’s therapy appointments, and Wanda was around so that had probably put James on edge. Bucky was the one who was functioning now but James had a tendency to annoy Bucky in his own head. Tony couldn’t imagine having someone constantly yapping at him in his head. That just sounded irritating at best but Bucky almost never showed outward signs that James was there.

He suspected it was because he had once, awhile ago, and Steve drew attention to it. He probably meant nothing by it but Tony was used to Bucky’s mumbling to himself at that point and knew what it meant. Steve was still half in denial about James’ presence. Whatever it was that happened Bucky almost never showed any sign that James was pestering him in his head now.

“Have you found anything?” Wanda asks from the kitchen. Tony was kind of jealous that Bucky let _her_ help in the kitchen but realistically he shouldn’t be allowed to be in the kitchen anyways so he leaves it.

“All I know is that this person used to work for me, that’s hardly a small list. So no, I haven’t found anything,” he says irritably. He has also instructed FRIDAY to keep track of everything and anything that seemed even remotely off in his online security but also noted that she should keep an eye on cameras around all his facilities. The AI has been off examining all cameras and code to make sure nothing was off and thus far she hasn’t sent anything to him to look at so he guessed whatever these guys were doing was really ineffective. HYDRA should up their hiring policies from ‘neo-Nazi’ to ‘actually useful’ and maybe they’d actually succeed in one of their insane plots.

“Here,” Bucky says to him gently after some time of him glaring at his computer. It’s a chocolate cupcake and Tony takes it gratefully, nearly shoving the entire thing in his mouth in one go. He _loved_ chocolate but rarely ate it because he typically overdid it every time he did.

“Jesus Stark, I had no idea you were part anaconda,” Wanda says, snickering.

“Shuah uhph,” he mumbles at her through the cupcake. Bucky at least laughs, which was better than his previous tense state. Tony didn’t blame him given the news from HYDRA but Tony could handle them and Bucky and James survived seventy years of them. They’d all be fine. Hell, even Wanda survived them though her circumstances were completely different than Tony, Bucky, and James’ encounters with the organization.

“There are more,” Bucky tells him, smiling softly.

“Awesome, because I’m probably going to eat like seven hundred of those,” he says, pushing his laptop away so he could go explore the kitchen. He and Wanda have been in there all day so there was probably more than just cupcakes but he was intent on eating more of that chocolate.

“Leave some for me,” Wanda calls after him but he ignores her. He wasn’t going to be denied cupcakes in his own damn home.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Noooot sure how I feel about this but still. Here y'all go!

Tony glares at James’ stupid dog. Neither he nor Bucky liked the damn thing but he put up a fuss when he brought it home as a puppy because Bucky got to keep _his_ baby animal. That was because Tony liked cats though. Dogs? Not so much. The only benefit to the dog was that it had no tail so at least it couldn’t smack all of Tony’s stuff off the table with it like a normal dog. Still, the Rottweiler stares at him in some attempt to look cute but Tony has a stomachache and he’s not in a good mood.

“Why is it that you only like me when I have food in my hand?” he asks the dog. Rocco whines a little and his ears go back some, making his eyes look wider and Tony supposed cuter. He hugs his soup closer to his chest and continues to glare at the dog.

“You ate two dozen cupcakes in like forty minutes,” Bucky says, hands on his hips. He doesn’t look very impressed and neither was Wanda when she realized he ate them all.

“Well I’m paying for it now,” Tony mumbles, glaring at the soup in his hands.

“Was it worth it to eat twenty four cupcakes in forty minutes, Tony? Was it worth it?” Bucky narrows his eyes and Rocco shuffles closer to Tony, hoping to get his soup. “Rocco, stop begging,” Bucky tells the dog and then rolls his eyes immediately. “I do _not_ let Americat beg,” he says presumably to James. Tony had no idea how that worked, the communication between the two. Sometimes they had it sometimes they didn’t and most of the time he was just confused about the whole thing so he left it.

“Hell yeah it was worth it, those things tasted amazing and I’d eat another dozen if they were still around stomachache be damned.” And this was why he never kept chocolate in the house, it was always gone way too fast and his stomach paid the price. Plus these days he was probably too old to be pulling shit like this without consequences. What he wouldn’t give to be twenty again. Rocco puts his head on the side of the couch where Tony is, blinking up at him. “You aren’t getting the soup, Rocco, go away,” he says to the dog. He doesn’t take the hint.

“I am never making chocolate cupcakes again,” Bucky tells him and he stomps off, presumably annoyed that Tony ate all the cupcakes. Rocco blinks at him again and Tony sighs, giving his soup a distasteful look.

“You know what, back up Rocco,” he tells the dog. Seemingly knowing he was about to get food the dog complies and Tony sets the dish on the ground for him. He happily eats the soup and Tony fears for the ground around the bowl. That floor wasn’t cheap. As soon as Rocco is done with the soup he growls at Tony and walks away. Tony barely resists the urge to tell the dog it could sleep _outside_ if it was going to act like that. James would be pissed off because he never made _Americat_ sleep outside even when she _still_ hasn’t learned to stay off the counter. He thinks Bucky secretly lets the cat on the counter even though he knows Tony has repeatedly forbade cats on counters.

*

When it came to spiders there were two general people to ask about that. Wanda already ruled out Natasha knowing anything before coming to Tony and she seemed more sure than she would be if it were just an interrogation. Clearly Wanda had gleaned details out of Nat’s mind and Tony wasn’t going to debate the morality of that mostly because he didn’t care if it was Nat Wanda was mindreading. That left the second spider they all knew and loved.

Peter just looks confused though, “uh… I don’t know anything about spiders. Well I know lots of stuff about spiders but not your spiders,” he clarifies.

He and Wanda exchange a look, “are you sure?” she asks. “It could be something innocuous, like maybe some criminal who has something to do with spiders, or even someone else who got bit by the same spider you did?”

“No one else got bit by the same spider I did, I know that for sure. I’ve been keeping my eye out for anyone with my powers since I got them and no one has popped up. I haven’t heard anything about spiders at all aside from, you know, Spider-Man. Which is me. So I don’t think that’s it,” he says, shrugging apologetically. Tony sighs and rubs his temples, unsure what to do with this. “Maybe you’re looking for Black Widows. Not like Natasha, but like the original ones,” Peter suggests.

“We had that thought,” Wanda says, “but they were all women and these voices were definitely male. I don’t think we’d run into three women whose voices were that deep all in one go.”

“Maybe they were using voice modifications,” Peter says.

“Why would they do that over channels they think are secure?” Tony asks. In part he asked because that made no sense to him but he also asked to see how good Peter’s critical thinking skills were. He knew more than most that a hero needed to think on their feet and they needed to do so with a clear head. That was easily his worst trait but Peter has shown himself to be pretty good at it.

“Better to be safe than sorry. SHIELD is still technically around even if it’s really disorganized and they kind of want their organization back from the Nazis. Maybe they’ve been found out before or they’re worried about turncoats in their ranks. I mean they stayed hidden in SHIELD for years, it makes sense that at least a few of them were triple agents and they’d never know given that you know, they’re spies. So maybe they’re higher ups looking to do something but they don’t want even the other ranks to know about it just in case the wrong person hears,” Peter says.

That, Tony had to admit, sounded good. It was well thought out and reasonable and Tony himself would do something like that if he wanted to avoid detection but Wanda and James are shaking their heads. “They were too vague to glean details off of anyways. If they wanted to talk specifics there would be a code language around what they were talking about. All anyone knows is what we do- that they’re trying to break into something of Tony’s. We don’t even know what that is,” Wanda points out.

“My experience tells me the same but that’s good kid. Congrats, you’re smarter than a Nazi,” James says, offering Peter a small smile. They had a weird relationship but Tony thinks that’s because Peter and Bucky got along very well and James didn’t know how he was supposed to fit into that. It seemed like a popular problem for him.

Peter wrinkles his nose, “I think everyone is smarter than a Nazi. Nazis are horrible,” he says.

No one would, at least logically, disagree with that but James wasn’t wrong in saying there was a weird uptake in Nazi sympathizers. It was one of the rare cases tony actually considered Steve’s feelings these days and mostly because he had to consider Bucky and James’. They fought against Nazis in World War Two- they were the ultimate enemy. Now they were coming back and people weren’t shutting them down like they should be- too many people thought they should be able to speak about their ‘opinions’ like they had real political legitimacy. That had to hurt for Steve to see, it certainly pissed James off something fierce. Bucky doesn’t say much but Tony had to wonder how he felt about his captors and torturers for seventy years being treated like they had something valid to say when the most certainly did not.

“You’d be surprised. People these days have forgotten what it was like back then, what the Nazis did. If they remembered they wouldn’t act like Nazis should get any kind of political platform no matter what kind of new, fancy named they stick on themselves,” James all but growls.

“Or,” Peter says after a few tense moments of silence, “they just don’t care how bad the Nazis were because they agree with that they did. I know it’s not something you want to consider but some people are just… bad people.”

Judging from the look on James’ face he hadn’t actually considered that and Tony winces. Yeah, he supposed it made sense for people to align themselves with Nazi ideology out of a kind of ignorance to how nasty those people were. But to out and out agree with their methods? That was something else entirely.

“I think this is because of SHIELD,” Wanda says after a few moments, drawing attention to herself. “Before HYDRA was hidden, something people thought of as a past relic. Now we know that they’re around and that they’re powerful. Anyone who might have agreed with the Nazi’s… _strong_ ideologies would have kept their mouths shut because they thought they’d be a minority an they know there is no power in being a minority. But since SHIELD broke and we discovered it as HYDRA, well, now they aren’t much of a minority at all, or not like they thought. It’s more acceptable because they know their ideologies have real power now.”

Peter looks as uncomfortable as Tony feels because she’s right. Maybe people didn’t think their messed up beliefs had power before but now… well now they knew they did.

“That’s just fucking disgusting,” James spits, “and _I’m_ the one going on trial for crimes against humanity? I might be a nasty piece of work but even _I_ know that this Nazi shit is wrong. And unlike these fools I don’t go defending my actions- I killed people in cold blood and I’ll freely admit to that. I don’t hide what I am like they do, pretending like they aren’t despicable.”

“You might not want to say that in court,” Tony says, “or you’ll be convicted.”

James shrugs, “after what I’ve been through there’s nothing that could be worse.”

“That you might want to say,” Wanda says.

*

Sometimes Steve showed up out of the blue and Bucky never liked when it happened but he didn’t want to turn the man away either. Of course since this trial business has shown up it’s gotten more frequent and he didn’t really want anything to do with it. But Steve was clinging harder to him now than ever thanks to the potential he had to go to jail for his actions as the Winter Soldier.

“You know I’d never let that happen to you, right?” Steve asks, blue eyes wide and earnest.

“You don’t get a say in this, Steve. Well you get a testimony statement kind of thing I think but that’s it. This isn’t about what you want, think is about what the court decides.” No one got a real say really, this was just the jury and him. And James too. Tony had invited that reporter friend of his over earlier, Christine, and she had spent a lot of time grilling him for details. The only time Tony left was when they got to December sixteenth nineteen ninety one for what Bucky felt were obvious reasons.

“Bucky-” Steve starts and Bucky shakes his head.

“No, stop this. I get that your worried and I appreciate that, but you can’t keep trying to keep trying to protect me from the inevitable. People are scared of what I did and they should be, they have a right to know exactly what happened and if that has to happen through a trial than fine.” He had no problem with that. Tony thought they had a good chance of winning and Bucky knew he was being pretty pessimistic about this. Even Christine had looked shaken by the end of their session and all he touched on was the details of each assassination he was behind. Including JFK, which had apparently been pinned on some Oswald guy. Then _that_ guy had been assassinated, which was likely a HYDRA cover up if he had to guess. Those details he knew nothing about because he would have been back in Cryo.

Bucky figured if Christine, whom he knew was pretty vicious and harsh, looked upset by the time he was done recounting the details of each assassination a jury might just pity him enough to let him go. God help him if it was James talking though, he’d screw them both over for sure. Christine didn’t know about him yet and Tony was hoping that she wouldn’t write something that screwed them over anyways. She was being nice enough to hold her story but that was, Bucky knew, partially because she needed time to research and confirm his story before she wrote her own. He decided he liked her because she might be harsh, but she seemed fair and shrewd enough to pick up on details others wouldn’t. She certainly did with Tony.

“You shouldn’t even be on trial,” Steve says angrily, “you were tortured for gods sake!”

“Steve, people don’t know that! Would you stop acting like everyone has as many details as you do? And stop acting like everyone knows me as well as you used to. You think like you do because you knew me before and you saw me after. No one else has that frame of reference, they’re just doing the best they can with what they know,” Bucky says. All they knew about him was that he was an assassin, one Tony tried unsuccessfully to kill in Siberia and then grew to like for some reason. They knew he worked for HYDRA but they didn’t know the circumstances of that and what they did know was sketchy at best. They also knew his skillset was easily as good at Steve’s and that had to scare them even more. He understood why people were afraid; he was just counting on them to not be afraid when they knew all the details.

“Then I’ll tell them what they need to know,” Steve says stubbornly.

“No offense but the general public has no faith in what you say and I’m not sure they should after telling people that you don’t need laws or whatever around your actions. That’s insane, Steve, _everyone_ has to follow laws. And absolutely _no one_ would listen to you overseas.” If his reputation in America was bad his reputation internationally was absolutely destroyed. Christine had considered them when writing her article and it obviously resonated because they seemed to believe it. Especially, Bucky thinks, because she was also critical of Tony too.

He leaves out that James had similar opinions to him on the limits department but James had problems with authority figures since HYDRA. He didn’t like the idea of limits because he didn’t like what happened when he had to follow the wrong person’s rules. Not far off from Steve’s argument, except James was mostly worried he’d get tortured or worse if he questioned things and suggested a way to change them. Steve didn’t want to work for HYDRA like he had accidentally done before, which Bucky understood, but he’s barely even been criticized for crossing limits to do what he felt was best.

James was wrong but Bucky at least got his reasoning, Steve’s reasoning he got less so. Until recently Steve pretty much set his standards and went for it- HYDRA or no he had no real reason to fear authority because authority figures listened to and worked with him. James got trapped by and tortured by authority figures in the past. The difference was staggering- James’ authority problems were easier to sympathize with given his past and Steve’s were… confusing. Ever since this whole serum thing no one has ever questioned him, not like they used to and Steve now _expected_ people to listen because he always thought he was right. Probably because people tended to act like he was always right or maybe it was because people didn’t like Steve’s biggest opposition- Tony.

Tony had no problem questioning authority and breaking the rules when it suited him, something Bucky didn’t think he’d ever be comfortable with due to his past, and that didn’t stop with Steve. He could see why people might not like Tony’s fast and loose style given how it could, and has, gone drastically wrong but he didn’t get why _Steve_ hated it so much. If he recalled right, and sometimes his memories were fuzzy, Steve had the same style. The man lied to like fifteen army agencies to try and fight in the war, something that was illegal at the time. Plus he broke rank to rescue Bucky and continued to ignore just about every instruction he got from a superior after that because he damn well felt like it. And because it was the right thing to do. Bucky couldn’t help but wonder where _that_ Steve went and when he was replaced with this alien.

The old Steve and Tony would have been the best of friends. This new Steve was just a guy with his old friend’s face and name. The realization is shocking to him because he’s been trying to pin point why, exactly, this new Steve made him uncomfortable for months. He’s had several therapy sessions about it and even the therapist seemed confused though that was probably because _he_ was confused. Of course he knew Steve wasn’t like his old self, he was hardly the old Bucky either, but he didn’t really realize that he still would have been friends with Steve if he was… well Steve. _His_ Steve. He knew this because he loved Tony.

Steve seems to realize that he’s realized something because he frowns, “what?”

“Remember when you were trying to get into the army still? Constantly lying about your health and all that?” he asks.

To his surprise Steve brightens considerably and laughs. The sound is warm and pretty as he smiles and shakes his head, “of course I do, Buck. What brought this on?”

Bucky shrugs, “I’m just wondering when that guy disappeared and how he ended up in Tony. You two would have had a lot in common back then, people even dismissed you both just the same. You two don’t really get along much the way you are now.”

This wipes the smile off Steve’s face quick and Bucky sees a quick flash of anger cross his face. He tenses the way he always does when he sees anger- what followed usually wasn’t pleasant for him- but Steve does nothing at first. This was for the best Bucky figured, and was infinitely better than the one time he pissed Tony off. The man had only been irritated at Bucky but he had reacted… badly. That had been the subject of several therapy sessions too. Steve though, he had less of a problem angering him even if he didn’t want to. Probably because he wasn’t particularly attached to his old friend.

“That… people… I have never had anything in common with Tony Stark and people don’t dismiss him at all. He’s one of the most powerful people in the world,” Steve says.

The statement isn’t inherently wrong, Tony _is_ easily one of the most powerful people in the world but people didn’t see him just like they didn’t see Steve. So he tells Steve this. “People never thought you were worth anything because you were small and asthmatic. People don’t think Tony is worth anything because they think he’s arrogant, or a party boy, or irrational, or whatever else. People dismissed you both because they didn’t see what was really there. ‘Course they don’t dismiss you now because you’re the exact image people have when they think of an authority figure instead of a skinny little asthmatic kid but,” he shrugs. “I don’t know. You and Tony would have liked each other if you were still skinny.” _I would have liked you if you were still skinny_ he thinks but he doesn’t say it. That’s just mean.

“Tony _is_ all of those things,” Steve says patiently. More patiently than he would with anyone else, Bucky knows.

“No. Tony is reckless but no more than you are, he just has bad luck,” he says, repeating Christine’s article. “And Tony isn’t arrogant or irrational, he’s scared and he acts impulsively. There’s a difference. Back when you found me at my apartment I was scared and acted impulsively too, at the time I felt I had no choice but to make increasingly stupid decisions because that was the only way I saw out. Tony does that too but you guys keep acting like he’s doing it to purposely piss you off or something. He’s just scared and doing what he thinks will help everyone,” he repeats.

Christine, Bucky thinks, saw some of that but he didn’t think anyone except maybe Wanda knew how deep that fear ran. Tony has spent his whole life making bad decisions that hurt people and in recent years that was coming back no matter how hard he tried to make good decisions they always seemed to go wrong. He needed to slow down but Bucky knew how panic worked, when you were in that mode you were in a constant state of trying to do damage control, which unfortunately just gave Tony more room to screw up. No one saw that though. Skinny Steve would have seen that, he always saw everything no matter how hard you tried to hide it. That trait seemed to leave when he got that stupid serum.

Sometimes Bucky wondered if that serum ruined Steve Rogers instead of making him better.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw Spider-Man Homecoming! I tell you all this because there are some movie details in here from that- not spoilers for the plot or anything like that, just little details of Peter's life that I now know. It shouldn't be a problem, but I figured I'd throw the warning out there just in case.

“I’m just saying ideally I want the Captain America fitness program,” Ned says, “and not that stuff they try to get us to do in gym. I mean I want a magical serum to make me hot.”

Peter laughs and shakes his head, “definitely not as cool as you think it is, dude.” He’d know, except he got a spider bite instead of serum.

“You say that but that’s because you don’t know. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t want to be Spider-Man, Spider-Man is the best _and_ he hangs out with Iron Man. That means he’s friends with _Tony Stark_ ,” Ned says in a meaningful tone.

This came up often and it would never stop being weird to him that Ned didn’t know _he_ was Spider-Man. He asked Tony if he could tell Ned but he suggested keeping him out of it for now because it gave Ned plausible deniability. If he didn’t know anything no one would try and use Ned against him, or anyone else. He also said if his friends started to get suspicious or if the villains started to figure things out than it was best to let them know for their own safety. So far no one was suspicious of anything so he kept quiet.

“Tony Stark is an asshole,” Peter says. It’s true but he was the lovable kind and he gave Peter cool things and let him drive his cars. He almost _died_ when he got to drive the Corvette. Michelle would be totally jealous.

“I need to disown you,” Ned says, “I can’t even believe those words just exited your mouth. Take them back.”

“No, it’s true. And Spider-Man probably has stupid powers like being able to talk to spiders or something. That’s totally not useful for dealing with crazy villains,” Peter says, spinning his lock around to get into his locker.

Ned snorts, “dude that would be the best power ever. If I was robbing a bank I would run like hell if Spider-Man told me he’d unleash spiders on me. Those things are scary and they have no business being like that,” he says adamantly.

Peter ignores that because Ned is terrified of spiders- making his love of Spider-Man weird. Still, normal people wouldn’t just run if they thought spiders were after them. They would take forever to even _get_ to the villain to freak them out. He maintained that that power was absolutely useless. He goes to tell Ned that but when he opens the door he just about jumps out of his skin when he finds what’s in it. Ned out and out shrieks, making a noise so loud Peter’s head starts to swim thanks to his increased senses and Ned letting that noise loose right in his ear.

Some teacher shows up right away thanks to Ned’s display, which he completed by shoving Peter in front of him as if they spider was about to jump out at them. “If Spider-Man was here he could probably get that thing the hell away from us!” Ned yells.

Yeah, Spider-Man was right here and he couldn’t do anything but wonder why the hell Flash Gordon left a _spider_ in his locker. At least he thinks it’s Flash until he sees his disgusted fact in the crowd and remembers that Flash liked spiders as much as Ned did. It takes a second but he remembers the conversation he had with Wanda and Tony about spiders and their mysterious connection to Tony.

Was this connected at all? He had no idea but he takes out his phone and takes a picture of the spider and sends it to Tony, telling him it was left in his locker and not by the usual suspects. Tony didn’t really know about the bullying but he has made enough comments for Peter to know he suspected. Well, he knew now for sure but he had to know about the spider thing if this was connected to his spider mystery.

Behind him Ned remains unaware and the teacher lets out a small scream at the spider in Peter’s locker too. “God that’s creepy,” Ned says as they back further away. Well, Ned backs away but he still had Peter by the shoulders as a shield in front of him.

“Hey Ned, what if Spider-Man is afraid of spiders?” he asks to try and lighten things up.

Ned looks at him like he’s stupid, “that’s as dumb as those weird memes about where Spider-Man’s webs come from. Obviously he can’t sneeze webs,” he says. Peter also rolls his eyes but that was because he was going to kick Bucky’s ass when he saw him next. He couldn’t believe he made _memes_ out of Peter’s webs! Damn Tony and his awkward sex ed lesson that brought this whole web thing up to begin with.

*

Tony examines the picture Peter sent with a frown. He’s a high school student so it could be entirely unrelated to HYDRA but it was convenient timing if it wasn’t. And if this _was_ related that brought up a whole new question of how the hell HYDRA knew anything about _Peter_. Spider-Man yes, Peter? Not so much.

“I can keep an eye on him if you want. I did most of the staking out business anyways back when I was the Winter Soldier. James thought it was boring,” Bucky says. That didn’t surprise Tony at all given how action oriented James was. Bucky was less about doing things, or at least he didn’t do things like James. His preferred methods of productivity ended up with a real product at the end of it, not just the thrill of having done something.

“Wouldn’t that be… oh what was that word your therapist used the other day for it?” he asks himself more than Bucky. She’d used it on _him_ regarding his so-called PTSD and it was something…

“Triggering?” Bucky asks, frowning. “Not unless you expect me to kill him. Which I doubt. I could take Wanda given that she also has HYDRA experience. Between the two of us we’d notice if Peter had a tail.”

Tony wasn’t so sure he did. Peter wasn’t a stupid kid, he’d notice if someone were following him. So how to get into superkid’s life without them noticing? “If you were to watch Peter how would you do it?” he asks. This couldn’t have been the first time Bucky has had to follow someone enhanced.

He considers it for a moment, “I’d probably stay inside or out of normal eyesight. When I followed Steve I stayed just outside the zone he paid the most attention to. It meant I was further away than I’d like but it also meant he wouldn’t notice me. Granted I was on a bit of a time crunch then, so if I were to do that the way I normally would I would have stuck to watching from the interior of buildings. Like a coffee shop. Windows are reflective, makes for good cover,” he says.

Right, that would make sense. “How long do you think you’d have to watch Peter to gather his identity?” he asks.

“You already know the answer to that,” Bucky points out.

“Sure, but not everyone can use a mathematical equation to find the most likely spot for Spider-Man’s original operation point. So how long?” he asks.

“Couple weeks or so probably, depending on his activity. Why?”

Because Peter was quite likely in danger, that’s why. But they didn’t know what was going on here exactly so Tony calls Wanda and she dutifully shows up to hatch a plan. The benefit to Wanda on the case was that she was a mind reader too. Something like that was infinitely useful when trying to find patterns.

“Should we tell Peter?” Wanda asks. Tony _swears_ she gives him a pointed look but he ignores it because he has another idea.

“No- don’t look at me like that Wanda- I want to see if he’ll find you guys. If he does than we know that our villain here is crafty, maybe more crafty than us. And if he doesn’t, well, we’ll fill him in and then give him lessons on how to ensure you aren’t being followed. But I’m sure he’ll notice one of you at least,” he says. He had the advantage of knowing what Wanda and Bucky looked like but that would only help so much. Plenty of people looked like Bucky- James proved that when he convinced some high school student that he wasn’t Bucky Barnes because he also looked kind of like Henry Cavill. Wanda’s features, while pretty, were plain enough to blend in a crowd.

Wanda considers this for a moment and nods, “that’s actually smart, gauging how much Peter watches his surroundings. He knows us so he’ll know we’re watching him faster, but it is worth it to see what his reaction time is. I agree that he will find us fast though.”

Bucky snorts, “you two maybe, but I was a ghost for seventy years for a reason. He won’t notice me. None of you would, even if you were looking right at me.”

The words make Tony shiver even though he isn’t sure why. Bucky couldn’t be wrong, even in the technological age he was only found once when he wanted to be found and another time when, according to James, Bucky lost his cool and fled the scene post- being labeled an international terrorist. Well, being labeled an international terrorist again thanks to his supposedly killing one King of Wakanda. “Wait, what do you mean ‘you two’? I don’t do spy work, you know that,” Tony says. Bucky was only working with Wanda.

“You do now. The Avengers might not think you’d be a good spy but you went underground just fine when the Mandarin blew up your house. You’re fucking famous, everyone should have noticed you but they didn’t. So you’re going to go do spy work now because its easier to work with three people in a triangle formation and even though I can cover all three general points of direction I don’t feel like doing that,” Bucky says loftily.

Wanda looks all kinds of confused but she’s probably gleaning a lot more out of his mind than Tony was given that she actually knew what was going on in there. Bucky gives her a look and she sighs, “I’m not exactly fully trained but he’s right. The more eyes the better,” she says.

“Peter is going to notice me in like four seconds flat,” Tony mumbles. Bucky doesn’t seem to agree but Tony and Wanda exchange a look, knowing he’s right.

*

James looks at the picture and frowns, “a wolf spider?” he asks.

“You know what kind of spider it is?” Tony asks, obviously surprised.

“‘Course I do. These little bastards are just nasty. Did Bucky not know?” he should, they only knew just about every plant and animal out there thanks to their job as international assassin. On one very memorable occasion in Canada James fought a moose and the damn thing almost won. Never again in his opinion, those suckers were basically immortal with how tough they were. Never piss a moose off. Or Canadian geese, those things were the devil incarnate. Still, Bucky should have recognized the spider.

“If he did he didn’t say anything. Any significance of the spider to HYDRA?” Tony asks.

He thinks about it pretty hard even though he already knew the answer. Sometimes, though, he remembered something if he thought about it long enough. He shakes his head after a few moments though because nothing was going to come. “Nothing. The only spiders that have significance to me are Black Widows for obvious reasons.” Then, inexplicably, something shimmers there. He knew the feeling well enough- he used to get it all the time when he first left HYDRA.

“You remember something?” Tony asks hopefully.

“No. There’s something there but I can’t quite get to it. I’ll let you know if something changes though and I can’t guarantee it’ll be useful. Sometimes I get these feelings and I remember how Bucky felt about his grandmother’s ugly ass tea pots,” he says.

 _Those were antiques!_ Is what Bucky thinks at him but he ignores it. Antique or not those things were hideous.

Tony snorts, “seriously?”

“Yeah. Or how bacon used to taste at some diner he used to go to. Completely irrelevant. Hell, I’ve remembered _dates_ he went on and honestly poor Steve and whoever Bucky suckered into going with him.” Back in the day Bucky had been kind of a ladies man. Now he was a meme trash and _James_ was the smooth talker.

 _A meme lord, dipshit_ Bucky thinks at him. Meme trash, lord, whatever. It was all the same to him.

“How does dating life from the forties differ compared to now?” Tony asks, grinning.

He thinks about it for a moment and shrugs, “women have better taste mostly. For all the fuss people put up around sex and dating there really isn’t much of a difference if Bucky’s memories are accurate. And I don’t see why he’d invent a sex life.” James was tempted to tell people that the ‘good old days’ were just as raunchy; people were just louder about it now. Which he personally approved of because it was amusing and Steve turned red whenever anything remotely sexual was brought up.

“Really?” Tony asks, surprised.

“Yeah. Except the gays, people like them a lot more now compared to then. Thank god being called a fairy fell out of fashion honestly, that was just plain stupid as far as insults go.” The weird thing was that it never really bothered Bucky to be called one though at that point in his life he didn’t really consider anyone but girls. It was the army that changed that. Most were only looking for human comfort really, but Bucky knew he was a little different not that he chose to think about that too much. Sex fantasies about your best friend were pretty frowned upon in his day. Now they both had dreams about Tony and in James’ not at all biased opinion it was a vast improvement.

“We got stuck with ‘queer’ a lot when I was a kid. Now it’s used as a description word for the community as a whole, which is weird but whatever I guess.” Tony shrugs, adapting to the odd change like he adapted to most things.

“Oh we had that too. Believe me, if _you_ thought it was weird to hear it in a way that wasn’t insulting how do you think I felt? I almost dropped Rocco’s leash and you know how he likes to run into traffic.” He loved his dog but sometimes he was a bit… dense. Like when he tries to chase tires, or sniff Americat’s ass for the billionth time only to get beat up by the cat again. James has given up giving the cat trouble because Rocco really should know better by now. It’s his own fault at this point.

Tony sighs, “yes, unfortunately I _do_ know how your dog likes chasing tires. When I had to walk the damn thing the other day _I_ almost got run over after he dragged me off. Some old woman ended up being my unlikely hero and wrangled the dog into submission,” he says.

James throws back his head and laughs, “you couldn’t control Rocco but some old bag could? Come on Tones, up your game,” he says. Tony smiles and flushes a little at the nickname. It was a familiar one from Rhodey but James has recently stole it along with a number of other random nicknames he saw fit. Bucky rarely used nicknames at all because he was no fun and also unimaginative.

“That old woman must have been a dog trainer or something. Either way I won’t complain because you jackass dog behaved the rest of the walk.”

“You know he’d like you if you were nicer to him,” James says. The two had a well-known bad relationship. Tony was cold to Rocco though and he knew it so of course he wasn’t going to like Tony. If he stopped favoring the cat Rocco would probably like him better.

“You know what, that is total bullshit. I gave him soup the other day and he only liked me until he was done with it, then he growled at me and fan off to go chew another one of my pillows,” Tony says, throwing his hands up in frustration.

“Beats jumping on the counter,” James shoots back.

“I can disinfect the counter, I can’t have Rocco unchew a pillow. And I _am_ nice to Rocco, he just hates me. I don’t treat him any different than you treat Americat,” Tony says, nose in the air.

“Do so. I avoid Americat, you kick Rocco out of bed,” James says.

“Because I don’t want my bed to smell like dog! He has his own bed, and it was expensive too so he should be grateful. Plus he’s _huge_ , I want to sleep with _you_ , not a petting zoo,” Tony mumbles.

“You let Americat sleep in the bed,” James counters. That little bastard took up more room than she had a right to. And she slept dead center in the middle of the bed _and_ Tony insisted on sleeping around her instead of just moving her. She was in no way less of a pain than Rocco.

“Americat is a _cat_. She’s the size of Rocco’s head, that’s not even comparable. And she doesn’t stink,” Tony says.

“You’ve never smelled the nasty farts that thing releases after eating wet food then,” James mumbles.

“Rocco’s turkey farts,” Tony counters and James has no argument to that. They had been forced to flee the premises the smell was so bad. Hell, even _Rocco_ couldn’t stand the smell. The poor dog kept staring at his ass like it had just betrayed him by releasing toxic gas though to be fair it sort of did.

“Thought so,” Tony says, clearly pleased he won this argument. “Let me know if that spider becomes relevant to you somehow also. And teach your dog not to be a jerk when going for a walk.”

James would, except Rocco never pulled him around. He was mostly happy to go for his morning jogs and he got extra happy when they played fetch in the dog park. Tony obviously needed to be nicer to the dog if he wanted Rocco to be nice to him; it worked for James just fine.


	6. Chapter 6

Tony answers the phone on the second ring when Peter calls mostly because he got the feeling this was going to be urgent at least to Peter and FRIDAY wasn’t so good at people skills yet. The AI had improved a lot but her stint as therapy AI messed up her ability to deal with people thanks to conflicting information she gathered from the field. He was letting her sort of her code on her own though because she had to learn.

“Yeah?” he says in place on an actual greeting.

“You have Wanda following me!” Peter all but yells. “I can do this on my own!”

He sighs and pinches his nose for a moment. Three days it took him to notice, which was impressive when he knew that Wanda was decent at spy work after working with her in the field. “I don’t doubt that Peter but-” Tony’s surprised when Peter cuts him off.

“Yes you do otherwise Wanda wouldn’t be following me! How long has this been going on?” he asks. He sounds hurt and he sighs again, hoping he didn’t accidentally just botch another relationship. Wanda got his reasoning and she was the one he didn’t communicate with last time, he figured that had to count for something. Maybe not.

“Three days and only because we were curious to see how fast you’d notice. You definitely passed that test,” he says in an attempt to smooth over Peter’s hurt feelings.

“When the hell did I start doing _tests_?” Peter snaps. The good news, Tony supposes, is that he had no idea about the Training Wheels Protocol. Or the Baby Monitor Protocol. And now he was never going to know because Tony would casually pretend to update the suit when he felt Peter was ready for it and ohh, he’d have tazer webs! No harm done.

“Since we think HYDRA might have spent enough time watching you to know how you are, kid. How else would they know to put that spider in _your_ locker, hmm? Do you realize what this means?” he asks, doing his best to mimic that stern parent tone that all parents seem to have mastered. He thinks he does okay.

Peter remains silent for a long moment, undoubtedly thinking about his aunt and maybe his friends too. “You think it was HYDRA? But why though?”

“Two birds in one stone. One, they want to let me specifically know that they knew about you. I pay too much attention to you to not care about you. And two, I think the spider itself was a message but neither James nor Bucky know what it means.” James had the flicker of a memory awhile ago but nothing seems to have come of it. Bucky remembered that he hated how itchy his army uniform used to be but that was something completely irrelevant. Only Steve could relate to that anyways.

“You care about me?” Peter asks, apparently missing the rest of that.

“Yeah kid, of course I care about you. Have you noticed anything… weird in the last few weeks? Also shake up your routine. I get you have school and all that but someone is bound to notice that Spider-Man only shows up when school is out, always out of the same freaking _ally way_ , and seems to go to bed at a reasonable time. The fact that no one has guessed that you’re a student is a miracle.” Bucky said his routine was _beyond_ predictable- like he had it timed down to the last second and Tony’s observations backed it up. Speaking of- he couldn’t believe _Wanda_ got busted before he did. He easily had the more recognizable face if for no other reason than the public having been saturated in all things Tony Stark since he was a child.

“Oh,” Peter says softly. “Well I care about you too.”

Tony pulls the phone back from his ear and squints at it even though he got that warm and fuzzy feeling in his chest when Peter said that. “Thanks. Back on track kid- have you noticed anything weird lately?” He doesn’t know why he blows the kid off; it was just how he reacted to these things. Also it was odd to be a role model of sorts.

“No. But I mean HYDRA has hidden for like ever, would I have noticed anything?” he asks.

“Yeah, I think you would. You aren’t stupid, I know you watch what’s going on around you and you’ve got good senses. It’d take work to hide from you, especially with a routine as set as yours. If even one detail was off you’d know.” He knew what that was like, he used to have a set routine too and when something was off he knew right away. Usually it took time to pinpoint _what_ was off but he still knew something was off. Peter would know as well given how fast he found out Wanda was tailing him.

“It still took three days to figure out it was Wanda. I mean I noticed her the first day but I didn’t really think _that_ was Wanda. Someone might look like her. But then I kept noticing her and well, there are only so many people who look like Wanda. Also I think some old man is following me, think that’s HYDRA?” he asks.

Tony has never been so offended in his whole life because the old man was _him_. “No, the old man isn’t HYDRA,” he all but snaps.

“Are you sure? Someone with facial hair that bad has to be evil,” Peter says.

He was four seconds away from hanging up on this kid. “The old man is me, you shit head,” he tells Peter.

That earns a few moments of silence from Peter before he speaks again. “Okay in my defense you were wearing a really bad mustache. I can’t be blamed for this,” he says quickly.

“You called me an old man,” Tony deadpans. That was just rude.

“Well, I’m gunna go because I need to think about whether or not I’ve noticed HYDRA agents following me around and Ned needs my help with chemistry homework and anyways have a good day bye!” Peter blurts out and then hangs up before Tony can protest.

*

“Tony, aging is natural. You’re fine,” James tells him. Tony has been staring in the mirror tracking every grey hair he has for the last two hours.

“Says the guy who isn’t aging,” he counters.

“I have greys,” he says. That was a lie, he had zero grey hairs but he was sure there would be some in there eventually. The serum wasn’t meant to make people immortal, it was only meant to make people strong and fast.

“Liar. Peter called me an old man!” Tony says, offended.

“Honey, you’re forty seven. You’re bound to get greys and sometimes get called old by twelve year olds. They think thirty is old,” he points out.

“I’ve been old for seventeen years!” Tony whines, looking downright horrified.

God, if Tony kept this up he was going to go hang out with Steve. Actually no, Tony couldn’t possibly whine so much he’d prefer that. “To a twelve year old,” James reminds him. “Twelve year olds are not the authority on being old.”

“Do I look old?” Tony asks him, eyes wide.

Not really no, given how much drinking, drugs, and superheroing he did he looked remarkably young. Normal humans in his position would look like they’d been road hard and put up wet but he only looked a little tired. “No. But you probably shouldn’t take it from the guy who’s literally one hundred this March,” he points out.

“You look twenty four,” Tony mumbles.

“Biologically I’m twenty nine though,” he says in an attempt to make Tony feel better.

“Still young to twelve year olds,” Tony tells him grumpily. James sighs because yeah, technically that was right. Tony must consider something new because he wrinkles his nose hard, “Jesus I’m basically robbing the cradle,” he says.

“Oh my god, you are not. Stop with this old nonsense,” James says. The attempt to stop Tony’s whining was futile though because he keeps going long enough for James to tell him to call Rhodey so he can lament about being old to him. Rhodey, when he answers the phone, is silent for a full five minutes before reminding Tony that he’s five years older than him. James can’t help but burst out laughing as Rhodey hangs up on tony because he called his best friend old by proxy. It probably didn’t help that Tony opened with a long speech about being ancient and two steps away from death.

“If it makes you feel better I can regale you with tales of the ‘good old days’ from Bucky’s childhood. I mean he had to live through the Great Depression though so it’s you know, depressing.” He was a teen by then but still, starvation knew no age barrier and it sucked for most everyone.

Tony considers this for a long moment and nods, “fine okay, go ahead and try and make me feel better with stories about your childhood.”

“I ever tell you about that time Peggy punched your old man?” he asks, knowing Tony was going to be hooked immediately.

True to form he leans forward, “explain everything in very vivid detail,” he says excitedly.

*

Peter paid attention to his surroundings, sure, but he still didn’t notice much different other than no more Wanda and no more old man that turned out to be Tony. He’s been avoiding contact after accidentally insulting the guy. Ned seemed to be pleased with this because he took some time off from his fake Stark internship to go build a Lego deathstar with him because that was _awesome_. He was lucky that his friends were so understanding and so cool, even if Flash didn’t think so and kept calling him ‘Penis Parker’ of all things.

“It’s three thousand pieces,” Ned says, excitement bright on his face. “I can’t believe I even managed to snag one, I almost had to fight a fifty year old Asian man for it.”

He tries to imagine Ned fighting an old Asian man and laughs. He would have responded but just then someone jumps down from a fire escape, Peter thinks, and holds up a gun, pointing it at Ned. Peter jumps in the way obviously, “hey, if you’re going to point a gun anywhere point it at me,” he says. Behind him Ned sucks in a breath, probably worried.

“Get out of the way kid,” the guy says.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen, you can’t shoot my friend.” It just wasn’t going to happen, not with him here. He was Spider-Man damnit; he was _not_ letting his friend get hurt when he was right there. And not… not with a gun. Not another person he cared about.

“And what are you going to do about it?” the guy asks.

Good question actually. Peter takes the time to look the guy over and realizes quickly this isn’t some random stick up. One, who go after _Ned_ when Peter was the one carrying the backpack with potentially valuable goods? Two, he wouldn’t have appeared via the fire escape because normal people didn’t do that. Three, he could see how muscled this guy was and how his eyes were trained on Peter, not Ned. He wasn’t looking for an opening, Peter realizes, because his actual target was already in front of him. But what was his goal?

He feigns to the left and Peter responds immediately, quickly correcting himself when the guy goes right and his finger tightens on the trigger of the gun. He reacts automatically and lets a web fly, easily blocking the gun’s barrel and wrapping it totally to the guy’s hand. Ned lets out a shriek behind him but Peter happens to know this is his happy scream and he had no time to waste anyways. He didn’t know how long he had until this guy did something else and he didn’t want to see what was in his bag of tricks. He lets a bunch of other webs fly, pinning the guy to the wall behind him easily and he pulls out his phone.

“Call Tony Stark. It’s under ‘Stank’ in my phone; tell him I might have caught a spider. He’ll know what you mean,” he says, not taking his eye off the guy in front of him. He doesn’t seem intent on fighting back and that makes Peter nervous because the events of his appearance suggested he was enhanced in some way.

“Hello? Tony Stark? Oh my god I’m talking to Tony Stark? For real?” Ned asks. “Wait, wait, wait Mr. Stark don’t hang up Peter caught a spider? I don’t know what that means but holy shit my best friend is Spider-Man this is the greatest day of my _life_ flash Gordon can suck it!” he says excitedly.

“Jesus Ned, stop fangirling over the guy,” Peter tells him even though sometimes he still wanted to kiss Tony when he saw him.

“Oh like you didn’t do this!” Ned shoots back.

“Wait. He didn’t? Three blocks away from the high school in that one ally way. By that sandwich shop. He didn’t fangirl? He went to _Germany_ with you?! He fought _Captain America_? He told you he couldn’t go because he had _homework_!” Ned all but shrieks. “Peter we need to have a talk about what to do when badass heroes want your help! Who gives a crap about homework when _Iron Man_ wants you to go to Germany to kick Captain America’s ass! Also Mr. Stark wants to know if you have the suit with you. Wait, did you make Peter’s way cooler Spider-Man suit? You did? Holy shit my best friend has a suit made my Tony Stark oh my god this is the _best_!” Peter is worried about Ned’s reactions to being attacked by potential HYDRA agents because he was way too excited. He does nod that he has the suit though and Ned relays this to Tony.

The guy he’s holding moves a little and Peter shoots another web at him to keep him in place. “Approximately seven minutes fat boy time,” Ned says and Peter has to keep from laughing. “What is- how do you not know what fat boy time is? It means people who are fat walk slower. Actually that’s just me. Fat boy time is Ned time. Should take you five on foot and like three seconds in your totally badass- oh hey you’re right above us hi!” Ned says, waving at Tony as he appears overhead in the suit.

Tony lands in font of Peter and to his surprise he steps out of his suit near immediately. “Who are you and how do you know who Peter is?” he snaps at the webbed up guy.

“Fuck off,” the webbed guy snaps back.

“Fine, suit yourself. FRIDAY?” Tony asks… FRIDAY Peter guessed.

“Running facial recognition,” FRIDAY tells him from inside the suit. Huh, Peter didn’t know he carried the AI everywhere.

“I don’t recognize him,” Bucky says- actually no James- to his left. Peter jumps ridiculously high and lands about a foot from where he was, bending his knees to break his fall a little. “Nice job kid, except for the fact that you were way too focused on this guy that you left literally every other space around you open to attack. I could have killed Ned like seven times.”

Peter immediately feels guilty but Tony waves him off, “leave the kid alone, he didn’t know. We need to get this guy back to the tower and call… someone. Was he enhanced?” Tony asks Peter.

“I think so yeah, he jumped us from there,” Peter says, pointing to the fire escape.

“Please tell me you pay attention to the top of buildings when you swing around the city,” James says. Peter knows its him because Bucky was basically allergic to leather and that’s what he was wearing.

“Um,” is all Peter says because he kind of didn’t. James rolls his eyes because he apparently _should_ be doing this and he didn’t know that. Villains didn’t usually come from the air except for that one time there was a freak alien attack.

“Leave the kid be, he did good,” Tony says to James again. “You did good,” Tony tells him. “‘Course you would have done better if you didn’t put your fangirling friend on the phone but no one’s perfect.”

“I wanted my hands free in case he escaped,” Peter explains.

Tony nods, “smart actually. Never mind I take the fangirling friend thing back, hey Ned. Thanks for the completely useless description of where you were,” Tony says, waving at him. Ned doesn’t even pay attention to the half an insult because he’s freaking out externally and internally. He keeps chanting ‘my best friend is Spider-Man’ over and over again and letting out small squeals of happiness and dancing around.

James doesn’t look pleased with this at all, Tony ignores this, and when Wanda shows up Ned just about shits a Christmas tree, angel and all. Hell, he might crap the presents out too, especially when he’s invited along back to Tony’s tower. He’s a witness, Tony explains, and they needed full accounts of what happened given that this was… weird. Ned loses all sense of rational thought once he hops into Happy’s town car though and just stares in wonder at everything. Peter sort of hopes he didn’t react like this but he could guarantee if he looked at his old home videos he was probably worse.

Peter had to agree with Tony that this was weird though and he thinks through the situation at hand while Ned freaks out over everything that’s happening. The guy could have shot Peter or Ned a few times but didn’t take the shot. He barely struggled in the webs, and even though he wasn’t talking he didn’t seem to care that he was being detained either. What his goal had been was unclear here and Peter didn’t like it. Ned, on the other hand, was begging Peter to let him be Wade to Peter’s Kim Possible because he really wanted to be the guy in the chair. Tony gives him a weird look at this and Peter goes to explain the reference but he waves him off, lamenting about how old he was and how he clearly couldn’t keep up with the children anymore. He’s about eighty percent sure this is Tony’s version of ‘I’m too old you keep up with you youngins’ and that was beyond weird.


	7. Chapter 7

“Want to see something totally blackmail worthy and embarrassing?” Tony asks Ned. James decided he was in charge of keeping the children occupied while he, Wanda, and some dipshit from the FBI dealt with the new houseguest.

“Uh, yeah,” Ned says, leaning forward in interest. Peter had a bad habit of filming _everything_ even without FRIDAY filming everything in the suit for him.

Tony pulls up a video of Peter with this Spider-Man mask on talking to himself in the mirror about some girl named Liz. It takes ten seconds for Ned to start laughing and another ten for him to double over and stop making noise as one of Peter’s spider eyes winks, except in the suit it looked like it glitched and blinked on it’s own accord. It was in no way attractive but that’s what made it so sweet. He might have stupid amounts of footage to review from Peter thanks to his filming habits but he had to admit it was all entertaining. It was something that was useful for him to do between Bucky’s trial arrangements, meetings with Christine, Accords meetings, and all his SI stuff.

“Oh my god it _winked_ ,” Ned wheezes out, snort laughing.

Peter chooses to reappear then and rushes to the screen, knowing exactly what was going on. “No, no, no, why would you show him this!” Peter asks, horrified.

“Payback for you calling me an old man,” Tony says lightly.

“But you _are_!” Peter whines in his own defense. His eyes go wide when he realizes his mistake.

“Keep it up kid, I’ll take that suit back _and_ get you in shit with your unusually attractive aunt. Have you _seen_ her?” he asks Ned, for some reason bonding with the kid over Peter’s hot aunt of all things.

Ned nods vigorously, earning an outraged smack to the head from Peter. “Don’t look at my aunt that way, it’s weird! And you, leave May out of this!” he tells Tony.

“You called me old _twice_!” Tony counters.

“Oh, a dog!” Ned says, interrupting them both.

“He hates everyone but James, good luck. His name is Rocco,” he says. Ned happily goes over to the dog and lets it sniff his hand; Peter close behind and to Tony’s intense surprise the dog doesn’t act like an ass. “You know what Rocco, this is why I don’t like you,” he tells the dog and he strides out of the room as the children pet the dog. Rocco doesn’t hate them apparently so it turned out Rocco only hated _him_. And Wanda. Actually he wasn’t fond of Bucky either but he dealt with him because Tony refused to take him on walks after nearly eating the sidewalk when Rocco decided he wanted to chase tires.

Rocco happily pants away as Peter scratches the space behind his ears and Ned pets the rest of him. Tony glares at the dog until Americat appears and rubs against his leg, looking up at him hopefully. He scoops the cat up and scratches her head, earning a purr and he gives the dog a _look_. See, someone loved him.

He leaves the kids with the dog and makes his way to the living room so he could send off an email or two to Christine in regards to the trial. God, there were still a million and one meetings about that and she didn’t know about this weird spider thing that was starting to take off. James still seemed pretty clueless as to who this could be and he hadn’t noticed much more than Peter in the couple days they tailed him. It wasn’t surprising to find that the kid didn’t notice him and Tony was starting to wonder if maybe this spider person had similar training to Bucky and James. It would make sense given how easily Peter noticed Tony and Wanda inserting themselves into his daily routine. Then they had to talk about that because routine made it easier to target him and he’s already mentioned several of his backpacks going missing.

That worried Tony because it could be run-of-the-mill people stealing shit in New York or it could be related to the HYDRA business. Either way they knew more about Peter than he was comfortable with and he needed to know how that happened. In the meantime he sends Christine an email to ask what she knows about Spider-Man and another asking what else she needed to gather in regards to Bucky. She was shockingly thorough in her ability to gather information, which would either be very good or very bad depending on what she decided to write here.

She answers back surprisingly fast with dates and times for further questions in regards to Bucky and an article she wrote about Spider-Man’s activity. Tony skims it and determines that Christine knew next to nothing about Peter even if the article didn’t let on that she had a lack of knowledge. It was just a good recap of what the public knew with some decent speculations about age in there. Tony probably should have guessed how young he was when they met but for some reason he assumed the kid was in college and being tongue tied around a celebrity was, well, normal. After he figured out that Peter was actually more of a Spider-Tot than a Spider-Man he figured he’d give him a shot anyways. The kid has proven himself pretty capable in a fight even if he technically wasn’t _supposed_ to fight and he knew what it was like to be a kid with extraordinary abilities. He wasn’t totally on board with tossing the kid to the wolves like he had been at Peter’s age- hence his suit being rigged with safety protocols- but he was willing to give the kid a fair shake.

He sends Christine an email back confirming her times because he figured being nice to her might mean she would write nice things about Bucky. He doubted it but a guy could hope.

*

Christine wasn’t a stupid woman, she knew she was missing something and Bucky was MIA at the moment. James was positive that she would notice him right away and within five minutes of talking she deduced that he had an accent Bucky didn’t. Bucky had a slight Russian accent and he for some reason got the Brooklyn accent. No clue why given that he thought that’s be reversed but alright. It takes another five minutes for her to notice the different speech patterns, but it’s Tony reaching out and threading his fingers through James’ that causes her to ask questions, he thinks.

“You don’t like touch,” she says, pouncing on it. James watches Tony sigh slightly not that it escapes Christine’s notice and he swears under his breath.

“Bucky doesn’t like touch,” he corrects. Tony wilts a little because he seemed to think he could keep this under wraps for longer but he asked Christine to cover this case because she was competent and could sway public opinion, to do that she needed all the information. And James was fucking tired of playing second-fiddle to Bucky when he was here too. He wanted recognition instead of staying hidden because his identity was somehow more controversial than Bucky’s.

She squints at him, “the difference?” she asks and James laughs. Oh, where did he begin?

“Pretty much everything,” Tony tells her.

Christine waits patiently for an explanation as to what the fuck _that_ meant so James explains what happened to create him, starting with Bucky’s conditioning and how it started to deteriorate his mind. It had been designed to but it had the unexpected side effect of breaking his mind down. Traits HYDRA found desirable- like James’ lack of a ‘normal’ moral compass and his recklessness- went to one side while Bucky’s compassion and general capacity to care went to the other, creating two different people. He explains what the therapist said about them both still having bits of the other given that Dissociative Identity Disorder typically developed in children before the personality set and his had developed long after his personality was established but the psychological circumstances still created him as a coping mechanism.

She takes in the information with more grace than most and waits until he’s done talking to ask questions. “Is this some weird ploy to claim mental instability to avoid a trial?” she asks. Tony gives her a look that is downright _venomous_ but James figured she’d ask something like that.

“Given that the first time I can pinpoint consciousness of my own existence was in the fifties, long before I even knew I would _have_ a trial I’d say no. And even if either one of us made that argument we were both declared fit to stand trial so if that was the plan it didn’t work,” he points out. Not that Bucky would ever even think to try and fool a jury. That was more up James’ alley not that he’d bother. If Tony, who was actually personally victimized by him, could see that he wasn’t really responsible for his actions surely a jury could. Granted it took Tony some time but that was only to be expected in his situation.

Christine holds his gaze for a long moment before she sits back, “you don’t seem very shy,” she says.

“I don’t really like people pretending I don’t exist,” he says, sitting back in his own seat.

“You don’t like people pretending you don’t exist,” she repeats slowly, tilting her head.

“No, I don’t. Bucky gets to do everything because he’s somehow more palatable to the public. Do you know what its like having people purposefully hide your existence because they don’t want to explain how you happened? To have to call to someone else’s name because that’s more acceptable to people than being yourself? It isn’t fun, and I can’t possibly stay a secret forever. You want the whole story and I’m a part of it whether or not anyone likes it.” Whether or not he likes it. He didn’t want to deal with Bucky’s life, his friends, his job, his cat or anything else to do with the guy but no, he had to pretend to be Bucky half the time because people didn’t know he existed. People, like Christine, may very well assume he exists to get Bucky out of a tough spot. Either way he got stuck living a life that had no separation from Bucky and he’d never get his own life. Hell, technically they even shared Tony though he knew that Tony loved them for completely different reasons. He saw enough through Bucky to know that Tony treated them differently.

Tony’s fingers tighten around his own and Christine remains impassive. “So for… however long you’ve lived here you’ve been two people. I’m guessing you knew about this,” she says to Tony.

“He was the one who first noticed. Most people can’t tell the difference,” he says. Steve still couldn’t but James was positive that it was due to willful ignorance. There was no reason someone who paid that much attention to Bucky would mistake them for each other.

“Do most people not notice basically everything about you changes? How… how does with work? With the… conditioning there were words, who were those applied to? How do your minds work?” The questions are asked from an objective standpoint because she’s obviously trying to figure out how things work.

“The words worked for us both but I was usually the one that took over. Bucky’s more… sensitive than I am. It was easier for me to kill.” And usually, if things were quiet, he took over. James could gather information later and he was better at interpretation than Bucky was. He didn’t need as much to go on.

“Did you like killing?” she asks.

Blunt maybe but he could appreciate that. “Most of the time no, but there were always targets who deserved worse than what I gave them.” Howard, for example. Tony takes that as his cue to go, probably because he didn’t much want to hear James’ opinions on his mother and that was fine. Christine raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything to Tony as he goes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky talk! The first of many talks to come.

His assignment from the therapist this week was to talk to Steve to tell him how he actually felt, which Bucky was not looking forward to. It was Tony that suggested going to the Tower because Bucky felt safer there and because he was going to run a few things by Steve in regards to Bucky’s trial and this spider nonsense. So far there wasn’t anything new on that front, which Bucky took as good news. Peter hadn’t noticed anything thankfully though Tony was still understandably on edge given that these people knew who Peter was. And unfortunately for them their caught spider turned out to be one that drank poison or something because he _died_ during the interrogation. They didn’t get anything interesting out of the guy before that either. Tony’s best guess for his presence was to shake up Peter’s life by all but forcing him to tell his best friend that he’s been lying to him for as long as he’s been Spider-Man, which would serve to isolate him if Ned hadn’t been so excited about the whole thing.

If that was this spider’s plan if failed more than miserably because Ned was doing his best to try and insert himself into Peter’s superheroing. The kid adapted pretty well to the new knowledge and, to Bucky’s amusement, also asked if he could sneeze webs. Peter had not been very impressed that his webs were still under scrutiny.

FRIDAY informing him that Steve was in the elevator draws his attention away from Peter’s webs and he sighs. Now, he supposed, was the best and easiest way to get this talking thing over with though he was one hundred percent stalling by telling Tony to ask him questions first. He goes to get up to find him but Tony appears in the doorway looking a little run down and Bucky sighs. As usual he was taking on too much but he refused to let anyone else help him with all the responsibilities he had taken on. The best he and Wanda got him to do was let Wanda keep an eye on Peter, which Peter was in on and agreed to mostly in case anyone he couldn’t deal with went after his aunt. Wanda was pretty much undefeatable with her powers so she was the safest person to help Peter out.

“I’m guessing you want me to talk to him first?” Tony asks.

Bucky nods, “if you would be so kind,” he says, offering Tony a small smile.

Tony’s face softens and Bucky can feel his cheeks turn a little red much to his embarrassment. James never would have blushed at something so stupid. He does like the attention though because Tony didn’t look at pretty much anyone like that. He had a long relationship history but of all the people he’s been with he’s only loved three, and Pepper was only around as a business partner. They were still awkward with each other but they had a good relationship. James was jealous but Bucky thought it was nice that they had worked things out like they had, Pepper ran Tony’s company and he knew how much Tony loved SI. He wouldn’t have wanted his relationship with Pepper ending to hurt his connection to something that made him happy.

“I kind of wanted to get this over with anyways,” Tony tells him. “It won’t take long though,” he warns. It was astounding to him that Tony blamed _Steve_ more for everything that happened in regards to his parents than Bucky. He had explained once that despite his initial murderous rage at Bucky (and James though he hadn’t known it at the time) once he had time to think, really think, it was Steve he ended up angry at. Bucky nor James had a choice, Tony reasoned, in doing what they did and he certainly had no choice in that situation. But Steve? He had a choice every step of the way. When he found out about Tony’s parents’ murder and who did it he could have told Tony, he could have told Tony before they went all over the world to try and find the man, he could have told him when the video started, and he chose to lie straight to Tony’s face the first time he asked if Steve knew. For that Tony turned the blame to Steve and maybe the HYDRA agents who made the call to kill his parents. Bucky followed the logic although he only thought Steve should get the blame for what he did, not the things he couldn’t control. But anger wasn’t exactly a rational emotion.

Steve steps out of the elevator and spots Bucky, face lighting up for a moment before Tony jumps in with his tablet, asking about spiders and catching Steve off guard. It was weird watching the two talk because the dislike they had for each other was palatable. Bucky didn’t think he helped when he told Steve that Tony was more like him than he was these days. He told him that once before; awhile ago before he and Tony had a more solid relationship, but he felt it was still a valid comparison. Talking with his therapist had also made him realize a few things in regards to that too, so he figured he’d talk about that with Steve not that he was looking forward to it.

Tony asks a few more questions and Steve looks over at him, giving him a look that blatantly said ‘save me’, which he might have thought was funny if it wasn’t for the fact that Tony really wasn’t doing anything wrong. Tony’s reaction to it didn’t make it better. “You know what Rogers, I don’t know why I bother with you. This shit is all relevant to keeping the best buddy you supposedly care about safe and cared for but apparently if you have to deal with me to do it you have a problem with it. Maybe next time _you_ can do all the work to keep him safe, _you_ can find a reporter who can very well sway public opinions in Bucky’s and James’ direction, and _you_ can fund the whole thing. Oh wait, you make Wanda do all the work and let _me_ pick up the tab just like always,” he snaps, throwing a hand in the air in frustration before storming off.

“I didn’t come here to visit him,” Steve says softly.

“But he was asking you stuff that _is_ relevant to me. He wasn’t totally wrong Steve. I mean he could have reacted better but I can see why he was annoyed,” Bucky tells him. “You two don’t have to like each other to be polite.” And Tony tried there for a hot second.

“You could have asked all that, he only did that to piss me off,” Steve says and Bucky’s eyebrow shoots up.

“Actually he did that because I asked him to. He’s been handling all the details here so it made more sense for him to ask you this stuff because he knows more than I do. And I also wanted to stall talking to you because I hate talking about my feelings and boy do I have a lot of them,” he says. Starting from when he was rescued on and that was more than seventy years ago now. It was a lot of time to cover.

This seems to surprise Steve but it didn’t surprise Bucky much. Both him and Tony assumed the other one did things just to piss the other off when they were both misinterpreting things half the time. The other half of the time was them being needlessly snippy with each other. “I… well I guess it had to come eventually,” Steve says, “what is it you wanted to talk about?”

Facing things head on like he always has. Except maybe a little too recklessly not that Bucky should complain, he was always right behind him until recent years. Bucky licks his lips as Steve sits a little too close. He doesn’t mean to make Bucky uncomfortable, he’s just used to being close to him. He’s used to a lot of things that aren’t there anymore.

 _You mourned a friend too_. The therapist’s words come back to him and he’s surprised by how accurate they were.

“I… well when I talked to my therapist last week somehow it ended up about you, I don’t know. Point was you suck at this adjusting to the future thing and I get why you’d cling to me. I’m an easy connection to your past, one you knew well and apparently felt terribly guilty for when I ‘died’ and again when you found out I didn’t actually die. But none of that stuff is your fault. And I guess the way you cling to me isn’t really technically you’re fault either, when you lose everything you want some piece of normalcy. But I don’t think you’re realizing that I’m not your Bucky,” he says, pushing it all out all at once.

 _Eloquent, Barnes_ James thinks at him. Too bad punching James in the face would be punching him in the face too.

Steve takes that in for a long few moments, thinking before he spoke. Bucky chooses to think this is a good sign. “You just need some more time to… well to gather yourself. You’ve been through a lot but you’ll get there,” Steve says softly. Bucky can see he really does have faith that this will happen and he sighs because that was going to make all this harder.

“No Steve, I won’t. I will never be that man again, I wasn’t even the guy you knew by the time I fell in the mountains, you were just too busy as Captain America to see it,” he says. Steve winces hard at that and Bucky’s jaw clenches. “I don’t blame you for it, you got all this responsibility thrown at you all at once, I know that that was hard. I just don’t think you realized how hard it was on me either.” He hadn’t expected to be nostalgic about the past, he wanted to talk about the future but he quickly realized this was a much better starting point. One, Steve was stuck in the past, and two, starting with a time Steve was clinging to would make the rest of what he has to say more palatable. Maybe it was best to start when things changed instead of talking about how things were different now.

“What do you mean?” he asks, frowning.

Bucky considers this for a long moment, trying to find the best way to convey his feelings to Steve. So far just blurting it all out failed so clearly he should try something new. “Remember that one time, we were about to take down a HYDRA base and you asked me if I was prepared to follow Captain America into fire? I told you that I was prepared to follow that skinny kid from Brooklyn but I don’t think you got it. No one else knew the Steve that was skinny and scrappy like I did, no one else knew that you were becoming a lot of things that weren’t the guy I knew. I get that you’re having a hard time seeing me as someone who isn’t the guy you used to know because it’s hard to admit someone you loved so much isn’t the person you loved anymore. But I know how that feels Steve, I lost you long before you lost me.”

It had been a shocking realization when the therapist pointed it out but it was true. There were so many times that he could remember when he felt distant from Steve, like Steve was someone he didn’t even know anymore. He followed him dutifully because Steve was his best friend and, like Steve now, he wanted Steve to be _his_ version of Steve badly enough that he overlooked that Steve was a new person. He had lost that skinny kid from Brooklyn and he had had to suffer that loss too, he just didn’t know that’s what was happening at the time. And now Steve had to suffer through losing his best friend even though he was _right there_. He knew how hard that loss was, how devastating it could be to lose someone he loved even when they were sitting a few inches away. It was hard to look at the person you used to love and admit that maybe you didn’t love who they became. Somewhere Steve changed and so had Bucky, and now neither of them were the men they used to be in the forties. Steve just didn’t know it yet.

“Is that… is that really how you feel?” he asks, “that you lost me?”

He shrugs, “yeah. I mean I did, the guy that’s sitting in front of me has almost nothing in common with they guy I used to protect from back alley fights.”

Steve snorts, “yeah, because I can punch for myself now,” he points out, trying to make a joke and failing.

“That too. But… I had this thought a long time ago but I didn’t tell you about it. When you were skinny you’d raise hell because you saw injustice and you did what you thought was right regardless of who was listening. But now you do whatever you want and expect people to listen because you think you’re right no matter what others are telling you. It’s almost like you became the bullies you used to hate so much because you’re not one of the little guys anymore. I think when you got that serum you lost a huge piece of who you were, or who I knew anyways. People change and I get that, but I have just as hard a time trying to see my friend in you as you do in me. The difference is that I don’t try and jam you back into your skinny little box because what’s done is done. You’re a different person and I have no choice but to accept it, and you have to accept me too or this relationship is dead plain and simple.” He couldn’t go on dealing with Steve trying to make him back into the old Bucky any more than he had been able to try and see Steve as his old friend back in the forties.

If they were meant to be friends than they would be and if not, well, then they’d go their separate ways. It happened and that was fine, or it would be if he wasn’t worried Steve would end up even more maladjusted to the future than he already was. But, as his therapist already pointed out, Steve’s mental health wasn’t _his_ responsibility.

“I don’t… I don’t think I’m trying to make you into the Bucky you used to be,” he says eventually. He doesn’t sound convinced though, which is progress.

“You are. I don’t think you mean it but you keep looking at me like you expect me to act like the guy you used to know. I’m not him and I never will be again. That guy is dead and gone even before I fell from the train. Just like you’re someone new, that’s what people do when they go through huge changes to their lives. Also I think you should make address the fact that you suck at being in the future. Christine had a point in her article when she said that Wanda’s mess up was because you froze in the field in Lagos. You need to address that maybe you’re as messed up as Tony and you’re ability to make decisions is about as good as his. Not at all really. Except you’re lucky enough not to have messed up like he has. If you accept that I think you’ll feel a lot better,” he says. And it would be a lot easier for him to adjust if he just gave up on the things that were and focused on how to deal with the things that are. Maybe then he and Bucky could actually work something out and maybe, _maybe_ , they could figure out their friendship again.

Steve remains silent for a really long time and Bucky lets him process all of that. It was a lot to take in all at once and Bucky kind of felt bad for laying it all out like that but it needed to be said. Finally though Steve sighs, “I was never meant to be in the future,” he says softly.

“Maybe, maybe not. But what you think was meant to happen is irrelevant when you _are_ in the future Steve. You can’t keep expecting things to behave like you’re in the past. It’s okay to be in the future Steve, you can order pizza without even having to worry about putting on pants!” That was easily the best thing about the future, how you could order food with no pants. That and Tony but technically Tony was sort of circumstantial, not a result of technology and human advancement.

“And what happens when the world doesn’t need me, huh? What do I do then?” he asks.

Bucky’s eyebrows rise because that wasn’t what he expected. “So what if it doesn’t, the world doesn’t _need_ most people like they need you and they get by just fine. What makes you so worried about that?” he asks.

Steve snorts, “oh come on, would you want to live without all the action?” he asks.

He shrugs, “yeah kinda. I like my job at the bookstore, I like that it’s quiet and that for once I get some damn peace. I’ve spent seventy years being used as a human weapon, the last thing I want is more action and apparently HYDRA can’t leave well enough alone and they keep chasing after me. And the Spider-Kid. And Tony. I just want to relax and to fade into obscurity and to live a normal damn life. Do you _not_ want that?” he asks.

“Hell no Bucky, I _like_ being needed. I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t,” he says softly.

“You’d learn to find some other way to do things. God, you and Tony both have no clue how to do anything without it being the biggest and brightest and most awesome thing ever,” he says, earning a dirty look from Steve that he ignores. “I swear you two forget how easy it is to make a difference in someone’s life without having to save the whole damn world to do it. Why can’t you be content with just changing a few people’s lives with some kind incidents instead of hurling yourselves into danger and overworking yourselves until you break?” He would never understand that, the way the two of them worked themselves like that. Tony bent over backwards to do everything all at once and then some and Bucky didn’t see why he didn’t just slow down and take his time. His goals would still be there even if he took longer to go through his list of things to do.

“Because I don’t want to live a life of mediocrity okay? Do you remember what things were like when I was skinny? How no one listened, how everyone always overlooked anything I could say or do because they didn’t think I was worth their time? I don’t want to live like that,” he says fast, almost angry.

“Than don’t,” Bucky fires back, “and from what I remember people listened to you just fine because I constantly had to save your ass when someone else decided to kick your ass because they didn’t like you telling them what’s what. And before you go on thinking about how much you like it when people listen to you here in the future with all that muscle mass maybe you might want to remember what it was like to be the little guy, Steve. People have spent a long time telling you to slow down now and you ignored them just like people ignored you because they thought they knew what was best. Like you do now. If you want to live a life in which people find a use for you than you need to learn how to exist in the future without losing it in the field when someone says my damn name, Steve. You _have_ to adjust to do what you want to.”

God, it was the same problem Tony had. The two of them rushed into things desperate to do what was right and forgot to consult people about it only to get bad results. Except Tony really did try to change things when he went wrong and Steve… Bucky got the feeling he was the only one who even told him he needed to slow down and consider himself. His team certainly said nothing and when Tony did it was in a snarky tone that Steve wouldn’t listen to.

Both of them, if they wanted to continue helping people, needed to deal with their problems first because right now neither of them were very effective. Especially Steve honestly, with the way he had been sought after as a freaking international war criminal for months until Tony managed to wiggle him out of those charges because he felt he world needed the Avengers. That hadn’t been popular with the public because once again the Avengers didn’t have to live with the consequences for their actions. Ironically Tony agreed, but he needed the team around to continue with the new version of the Accords so here they were.

“Are you really okay with sitting back and doing nothing?” Steve asks finally, giving Bucky an incredulous look.

“I’m not doing nothing, Steve. I’m in a relationship, I’m doing therapy, I have a job, I take care of my cat and water Tony’s plants. I’ve spent some time bonding with the Spider-Kid, I hang out with Wanda and we’ve made a list of random tourist things to do together because New York is new to both of us given that this isn’t exactly the city I remember. I do things all the time; I just don’t save the world because I think after all I’ve been through I deserve to have my life back. Maybe that’s nothing to you, but to me that’s everything.” After all HYDRA has taken from him, after everything he’s done and everything that has been done to him all he wanted was a standard life. How Steve could want anything different he had no idea and the same went for Tony. Bucky just wanted something normal. Hell, even _James_ wanted something relatively normal and he was far more gung ho for being the kind of reckless Steve and Tony were.

To him and James an average life was a symbol of survival, not failure. After all that he and James have been through being able to sit down and read some murder mystery book instead of hopping on some private jet to save the world was a sign that they managed to survive through all the crap they were put through and that they ended up okay on the other side. He couldn’t imagine a life in which his goal of having an average life was some kind of failure. Failure to him would be living a life like Steve and Tony’s where he was extraordinary but at such a cost that at the end of it he barely knew who he was anymore. He’s lived a life like that before and to him that was his worst nightmare. Never again would he ever live in a way that meant compromising himself like that, _never_ again.


	9. Chapter 9

Christine wondered about the ethics of two people in one body. James had mentioned some things himself, like always having to live through the scope of Bucky’s life. He didn’t get his own wants, needs, and desires because he had to cater to Bucky’s. Of course Bucky, at least in theory, didn’t get any of those things either but a little research showed that Bucky was the one that was heavily catered to. It made sense with the trial coming up but something tells her that isn’t the only reason Bucky get preferential treatment.

She wonders what it’s like to be James, stuck in a body with another person and forced to sometimes live their life for them. She wasn’t a ‘live your life for you’ kind of person and according to her research a lot of other people with Dissociative Identity Disorder are similar in their thought process. Then there was the fact that most people wouldn’t even believe that James existed- she hadn’t. It was too convenient for her that suddenly there was another person around to take the blame for Bucky’s actions but true to her regular method of doing things she researched.

While Tony was happy to send over plenty of footage for her to watch of him interacting with each person that didn’t cut it for her. There was reason for Bucky to lie in that situation, even when Tony wasn’t around, because he knew the cameras were always watching. So she managed to get ahold of some other camera footage that surrounded the general area around Tony’s house, thankful that her charms still worked. And by charms she meant a bunch of illegal things that she hoped she didn’t get caught for. When she compared the footage though it all lined up with Tony’s. Bucky could be a very, very good liar, but it was unlikely that in the months of footage she went over that he would be perfect every time.

No one was that good, not even the Winter Soldier, so she grudgingly admitted that James existed. Ideally she’d like to get an opinion from a therapist but the one Tony got for his increasingly strange boyfriend(s) refused to speak to her. She said something along the lines of refusing to participate in selling whatever crock of shit story Christine was going to write on a mental health issue she didn’t understand. She also advised Tony not to let her write anything and they all knew if he really wanted to he could shut her up. She might have power but she only had so much of it, Tony easily outdid her on that front. He left the decision on whether or not anything was to come of this to Bucky and James though.

Whatever communication happened between those two Christine had no idea and she didn’t particularly care. Bucky had asked her if she was going to publish all of this anyways and she said that she wouldn’t, not without her permission. The public didn’t technically need to know about James to make any decision on the Winter Soldier case. So he was there, two people suffered instead of one. Christine didn’t like leaving out details but the therapist wasn’t wrong about her lack of understanding and as much as she didn’t like leaving out details she also didn’t like writing on subjects she didn’t understand. It made for shoddy journalism and she detested shoddy journalism. Either way James’ presence wasn’t abundantly pertinent to the Winter Soldier’s actions, not really given that people ended up dead regardless of who killed them, so she was willing to let the detail go.

To her surprise Bucky told her to print something. When she asked why, and gave him a warning that this was on the record that she usually wouldn’t give, he told her that he appreciated putting ethics before her story. That, and he felt genuinely bad that James didn’t really have a life outside of his. According to Bucky James had also had a point in saying that he deserved to be known, to be acknowledged outside of Tony’s house. So Christine had started to put together a timeline for the Winter Soldier, both in regards to Bucky and James. She gave Bucky a warning that she was going to have several more questions that she expected answers to but Bucky seemed at ease with that.

Now she had some more answers at least in some areas. Bucky’s therapist had sent her several articles on DID with a note that if Bucky was insisting on her writing anything about his condition she best get it right and Christine was happy to read the material. It certainly wasn’t the only material she read and Bucky’s therapist wasn’t the only one she grabbed an opinion from. This was hardly her area of expertise and in keeping with her usual concentration on ethics she knew this was the kind of thing she had to get right. She was a healthy skeptic of just about anything, but convenient timing or no evidence for James existed in spades.

So now she was back to her original argument with herself. What were the ethics of having two people in one body when realistically neither one of them could live their own lives? It must be something like having a conjoined twin, dragging the other around everywhere and unable to live on your own. Or maybe the people who had DID didn’t mind living with others, like roommates except they live in your head instead of your house. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could conceivably contextualize without some kind of experience she supposed. Thinking over Tony’s relationship to both Bucky and James she sends him a text, hoping to get a response if for no other reason than morbid curiosity.

_If you sleep with Bucky or James does the presence of the other make it a threesome?_

It was legitimate and she felt after sleeping with the guy it wasn’t _too_ weird to ask. After you see a person naked there should be a ‘no awkwardness’ rule.

_Jesus._

_Peter just asked this_

_No it is not a threesome_

_Perv_

She looks down at the string of texts and laughs, shaking her head.

*

Peter _had_ noticed a difference in his surroundings eventually, but it was when some homeless man that usually sat on the corner of a street he passed every day disappeared. Wanda and Tony did their best to investigate but found nothing in regards to HYDRA or spiders of any kind. They had both expected to find something given how much they had gathered before but the case went cold fast.

“They did all this on purpose,” Bucky says. Wanda and Tony turn to face him, abandoning their own theories in favor of listening to his.

“What makes you think so?” Tony asks. They did get careless and sloppy fast, and then they got themselves together just as fast. Bucky’s interpretation of the actions just might have merit.

“Because we had nothing for months and then a bunch of things. They knew Wanda was listening, I don’t know how but they did, they probably aren’t even trying to break into anything of yours Tony. They probably said that to distract you while they watched Peter to try and shake up our dynamic. Likely in the hopes of separating us, isolation makes targeting victims easier and with us all together I’m not an easy target,” he says, staring off into space as he finishes that rant. Tony winces, wondering if he was going to be okay. Remembering his HYDRA training like this was sometimes hard on him in a way that didn’t affect James as much. But James was currently fucking off to wherever so Bucky was left to deal with all of this until he was back.

“How would Peter shake us up like that though?” Tony asks, frowning.

“Simple. Peter has become like a surrogate son to you, don’t deny it I overheard you congratulating him the other day because your father didn’t encourage you much. There’s no sense in denying it. I think by exposing Peter to Ned they figured Ned would react like a normal human and be upset hat Peter lied to him, which would distract you as you tried to comfort him and I’m easy enough to distract working with the Avengers. It would leave Bucky exposed in a way he usually isn’t. And we haven’t found any evidence for anything you own being tampered with in any way,” Wanda points out.

True, but if they were good there wouldn’t _be_ evidence. Peter uncovered some illegal weapons thing the other day just running around doing Spider-Man things, they would have to have a good system not to get caught given what they had. Granted their system sucked if it got thwarted by a fifteen year old in spandex but still. There were plenty of ways to operate in ways that weren’t visible to anyone but the random fifteen year old lingering around with a weird ability to shoot webs from his wrists.

Peter hadn’t been happy to discover that Bucky turned his webs into a meme. He was less impressed that Tony’s favorite was the one in which Spider-Man was crouching over a web covered turd with an ‘aww not again’ thought bubble over his head. Tony couldn’t help it, the memes were hilarious.

“And if we’re wrong?” he asks. Peter was now exposed to at least some of HYDRA and they could hope that they were disorganized but he wasn’t taking that chance. A bunch of Nazi madmen knew who Peter was, they were doing weird shit with spiders, and apparently all of their evidence was supposed to mean something to them.

“I don’t think we are but if that’s the case we’ll find out soon enough,” Bucky says.

“And if soon enough is when Peter ends up dead? Or his aunt? Because something tells me neither one would react well to the death of the other and that would also be a good way to shake us all up,” he points out. Why no one has attempted to take out either one of them Tony had no idea. Both would make easy targets in their own ways- Peter might be enhanced but he’s still a kid and he’s sloppy even if he’s getting better. May might not be enhanced but she’s still an adult with life experience, it would make her harder to track and find if she was tipped off. The problem was that Peter didn’t really want to tell her about his being Spider-Man and Tony wasn’t sure if it would be better or worse to go behind Peter’s back to tell her. Theoretically she could make him disappear but just as theoretically Peter is a fifteen year old boy who thinks he knows everything and might just take off to save the world and be a jerk like Tony would if he were a fifteen year old boy again.

“If they wanted Peter or May dead they would be. I don’t think they really care about either one of them, the target is me. They’re just easy distractions,” Bucky says.

Okay, that was fair. But they would still make some easy distractions even if they weren’t the actual targets. Tony doesn’t say anything though. He, Wanda, and Bucky all sit and think about what was going on with these HYDRA goons and how to fix it.

*

Tony supposes it shouldn’t come as a surprise that gangly, awkward Peter Parker got made fun of at school but it does for some reason. Probably because he thought Peter was awesome but that wasn’t relevant right now. Right now he had some research that needed to be done on spiders and everyone decided Spider-Man gets to do it. Peter was the one who wanted another mission. He, Bucky, and Wanda thought that maybe there was something special about wolf spiders in particular that was drawing HYDRA to them. Maybe they were going to replace their octopus symbol with a spider while continuing to pretend it wasn’t wildly inaccurate.

Granted when he tracks Peter to a party- apparently he _was_ a normal fifteen year old after all- he doesn’t expect an entire group of drunken teenage twits yelling ‘penis parker’ at the top of their lungs. Poor Peter much be mortified, Tony would be if he were Peter. He had experience with assholes though so he snatches the microphone out of the kid leading the chant’s hand before anyone notices who he was and the kid whips around. Tony thinks he’s about to tell him off but whatever nasty comment was on the tip of his tongue was gone when he realizes who he was looking at.

“Penis Parker. Really clever,” Tony says in a tone that indicates that he does not in any way think this was clever at all. “Hey kids,” he says to the crowd, grinning at them. They were all so silent Tony hears someone drop their cup in the kitchen four rooms away. God, it was so weird to be in the position that teachers usually were when they busted some little asshole for… well being a little asshole. “Where is the man of the night hmm? Peter, I need some help with some things and if you fled the scene I’ll understand because this little dilweed to my left needs a lesson in creative insults but also I’m not going to be impressed, I took time out of my day to come get you myself when I could have sent Happy,” he says.

He scans the dead silent crowd for Peter, praying that the kid didn’t run off in shame and thankfully he spots Ned staring at him with wide eyes. “You, Ned, where is Peter?” he asks. Ned drops his glass on the ground but thankfully he’d rocking a red solo cup instead of a real glass so the drink just spills everywhere.

Could Peter get drunk with his enhancement? That would be a fun experiment. He reminds himself to pick up tequila on the way back to the Tower to run some illegal experiments on the Spider-Kid. He doubted he could get drunk with his increased metabolism anyways so the tequila would serve as a fiery warning to swear off alcohol for life. May would… probably kick his ass honestly.

“Um. The bathroom,” Ned eventually gets out.

“Well get him out, I have things to do,” he says, gesturing for Ned to go get his friend.

“You know Peter Parker?” the kid who was leading the ‘penis parker’ chant asks, apparently recovering from shock.

“Yes, I know Peter Parker. Did he not tell you about the Stark Internship? Very prestigious,” Tony says. _Very_ prestigious considering you had to be enhanced to get in. And also it didn’t exist.

“ _You_ talk to _Peter Parker_ ,” the kid says more than asks, clearly surprised Tony would lower himself to random fifteen year olds from Queens.

Tony sighs, “Yes, I know Peter Parker who does an internship thing for me and yes, that’s very cool because I’m Iron Man. Got that… what’s your name?” he asks. Time to slam this kid down where he belongs.

“Flash,” the kid says, looking pleased to be talking about him now.

“Good, got that then, Flint?” he asks. He purposefully screws up his name because nothing pissed a person off more than screwing up their name. He’s done it in business meetings just to fluster people and then mopped the floor with them afterwards. He keeps it light for the kid because he doesn’t want to ruin his life; he just wants to make sure he knows how it feels to be publically humiliated in font of a huge party full of people. A little taste of his own medicine.

“Uh, Flash, you know, like the superhero,” he says.

Tony can’t help but snort and blurt out, “why would I memorize the names of fictional superheroes when I’m a superhero in real life?” The poor kind looks a tad crushed and Tony sighs, not having meant to be _that_ much of a dick to the kid. “Look, pro tip for the future if you’re actually useful on that mathletes team,” Tony gestures to the jacket hanging on the back of his chair, “then you’re too smart to be acting like an asshole and bullying random kids for a little thrill. Go drive fast like normal people, no need to leave permanent psychological scarring because you want entertainment. Hey Peter, let’s go!” he says, spotting the kid across the room. Peter looks as shocked as his peers, which wasn’t doing him any favors.

The crowd is still dead silent and Flash is beet red, apparently embarrassed to be lectured by Iron Man in front of a whole crowd of people. Tony pokes him, “cheer up kid, you’re making me sad,” he says. Jeeze, he wasn’t _that_ bad was he? All he did was mess the kid’s name up and be a little condescending. Granted it was in front of his peers but that’s when he got for calling some poor innocent kid ‘penis parker’ for some unknown reason.

“What did you do to Flash?” Peter asks when he gets close enough.

“Called him a dillweed, acted like he was an idiot for not believing you had an internship with him, screwed up his name, told him that he didn’t care that his name was Flash ‘like the superhero’ because he _is_ a superhero, and then told him to cut his bullying out. In short Iron Man is the best superhero _ever_ ,” Ned says, summing all that up relatively fast and neat. The crowd chooses then to come back to life and they all cheer mostly because they’re probably drunk and it seemed like an appropriate time to cheer.

Tony smiles, “thanks kids. Here you go,” he says, handing Flash his microphone back. “Seriously kid, cut being a douchebag, it doesn’t get you anywhere. I know from experience,” he says, awkwardly patting Flash on the shoulder and walking out with Peter and Ned behind him.

“Dude,” Peter says, “this is the greatest night of my life!”

“You’re welcome, I need you to go research wolf spiders and I have an appointment for you to talk to an expert tomorrow after school so you don’t miss class. Also ‘penis parker’? not even creative,” he says, slipping his favor in there nicely and hopefully without much detection.

“Ew gross I don’t want to research spiders!” Peter says, shivering. “Also I think the penis parker thing is because I’m trans but whatever. It isn’t creative at all,” he agrees.

Tony stops walking and it takes a couple of steps for Ned and Peter to realize. Peter looks nervous even though he doesn’t need to be. “Are you telling me that I gave you a forty five minute sex ed lesson for nothing because your confusion on vas deferens were because you _don’t have them_? I mean there’s no excuse for you guessing that they were a Pokémon but we all have flaws. Kid, that was the most awkward forty-five minutes of my life that led to memes about you shitting webbed turds when you could have saved us both all this trouble by just saying you were trans and letting us both off the hook for that awkward lesson in anatomy. Jesus. You meet the spider guy at four tomorrow,” he says and he continues walking.

“I don’t want to meet a spider person! I don’t even like spiders!” Peter protests.

“Well sucks to be you, you’re Spider-Man so you get to do the spider things. It’s the least dangerous task we have lined up and no one else wants to do it. So congrats, you wanted another mission and you’ve got one,” Tony says, patting his shoulder.

“Gross, I’m so glad I’m not an Avenger,” Ned says, giving Peter a pitying look.

Peter sighs and throws a hand up in annoyance, “and what are you doing?” he asks.

“Breaking into a HYDRA base on the edge of the city to see if there’s anything useful in it. Spider guy, you meet him at four,” Tony reminds him. “Want a ride home? Also can you get drunk?”

“I’m taking the ride home, if I go by Fat Boy Time I won’t be home until next week. Also you’re going to that spider guy myself; you know how I feel about spiders. The only spiders I like are Spider-Man, that’s you, and Black Widow but only because she’s hot and can crush my head with her thighs. That’s how I want to die,” Ned says to Peter and Tony frowns.

Kids these days, he swears.

“Getting your head crushed between Natasha’s thighs sounds a lot more fun in theory than it is in practice,” Tony tells him. Ned just about faints with the knowledge and Tony turns to Peter. “Ride?”

He sighs, “fine. What am I supposed to ask the spider guy?” he asks in a glum tone.

“Just general stuff, make yourself an expert on wolf spiders and see if there’s anything HYDRA might like as far as symbolism or whatever. Like if they might connect to the spiders like they do with HYDRAs even though their symbol is a fucking octopus,” he says. That will piss him off until he’s dead.

“Fine,” Peter mumbles, “Ned, you’re coming with me,” he tells his friend.

“No, I told you how I feel about spiders. I screamed when we found the last one,” he points out.

“Well you wanted to be the guy in the chair and now apparently we’re _both_ on desk duty and I’m not suffering along,” Peter says.

“Actually we don’t know for sure if HYDRA has stopped following you so it might be best that you go alone,” Tony says.

Ned jumps up behind him, fist pumping the air. “Yes!” he says excitedly.

Peter glares at him, “come on! Really?”

“The spider guy could be dangerous, you don’t know. It could end up being like super 007,” Tony lies. The spider guy has been checked out more than a stripper in Vegas, nothing about him was remarkable and since no one liked spiders they all decided this was a task for Spider-Man. It helped that it was nice and safe.

Peter sighs, “I thought there would be more like… fighting involved in these things,” he says.

“There will be, once you’re not a Spider-Tot trying to prove yourself. You’re a smart kid; you’ll get there. Just keep eating those churros from thankful old ladies,” Tony says.

“You get churros from old ladies and don’t share?” Ned asks, offended.

“That isn’t a food your share, Ned,” Peter says.

“Neither are chili cheese fries but I’ve shared those with you,” Ned counters.

“Once and because we were abandoned in a bus station with a creep that kind of looked like he took a bath in acid and kept complaining about killing Francis,” Peter says.

Tony frowns, “ _what_?”

“It was last year,” Peter explains, “and we didn’t want to die and Ned was the one with all the food.” He gives Ned a _look_ and Ned rolls his eyes.

“Why didn’t you just beat feet the hell out of there and take a different train?” he asks. Judging from the look on Peter and Ned’s faces neither of them considered that an option. “This is why we’re sending you to the spider guy,” he tells Peter.

Peter grudgingly accepts his fate but he whines about it all the way home. Tony also learns that Peter had no idea whether or not he could get drunk because he’s never drank before and honestly that was just precious. At his age Tony probably would have been classified as an alcoholic if that much alcohol consumption wasn’t considered normal for his age group for some reason. With some instructions to experiment with tequila he leaves the kids at May’s doorstep and runs before she catches him and tries to have a conversation. Peter had given him a fair warning that she wasn’t impressed with the stress Peter apparently had over the internship, which really only proved that his task of talking to the spider guy was fitting. Peter wasn’t impressed when Tony told him that though.

What was he supposed to do though, have the kid raid a freaking HYDRA base? No. he only brought him to Germany because Steve might rough him up but he wasn’t about to lay the kid flat. That would have been Wanda and thankfully he avoided her.


	10. Chapter 10

Tony would have preferred James in on this thing but no; James had continued to fuck off to wherever in Bucky (James’?) mind. Bucky had all the same training though and surprisingly he had wanted to invite Steve to this thing. “The last time I saw him I was kind of… harsh. I thought maybe this might make up for it and besides; he’s the most experienced out of all of us minus me so he’s useful. And he’s used to working with Wanda,” Bucky says.

He doesn’t mention that Steve would be _way_ too distracted with Bucky in the field or that the last two times he supervised Wanda in the field things went wrong. In both of their defense that incident in Lagos really wasn’t anyone’s fault, but the airport thing was a disaster no one needed. But this was Bucky’s call even if Tony disagreed- he needed to learn how to make bold decisions that weren’t in the kitchen and how to deal with the fallout if there was any. “You know you don’t owe him anything, right? If you were harsh I can guarantee he deserved it. James is the one who says ignorant things without thinking it through, you’re always level headed that way.” Bucky was also fairly introverted and shy in a way James wasn’t. James was bold and impulsive, which was as endearing as it was frustrating. Rhodey once told Tony that’s what it was like dealing with him all the time and now he felt bad for him and Pepper.

Bucky sighs, “I know I don’t owe him anything but I feel like we could have a relationship. If he pulls his head out of his ass anyways.” Yeah, Tony decided that telling him not to hold his breath was rude so he keeps it to himself and continues with his plans for HYDRA invasion.

To say things didn’t go as planned was something of an understatement. “It wasn’t abandoned when I checked for minds yesterday,” Wanda says, frowning in confusion at the empty space.

“Did you hear anything from their minds to suggest they were moving?” Steve asks.

Wanda shakes her head, “I avoid doing that when I can because it’s invasive. I just checked to see if there were minds buzzing in here and there were.”

They stand there for a moment half expecting something to jump out at them when Steve speaks, “is this cleared with anyone?”

That was probably something he should have asked about _before_ getting here to raid a HYDRA base but Tony doesn’t say anything about that. “Yeah, I cleared it for a few people. Five of us have clearance to clean this thing out. Just avoid property damage,” he says and he steps out of the suit. Bucky gives him a look that suggests he wants Tony back in that suit immediately but it closes and takes off into the air to survey the area in stealth mode.

“There are only four of us,” Steve says, frowning. Tony, Wanda, him, and Bucky- yeah, Tony knew that.

“I figured I’d leave a spot open in case we needed backup or some idiot shows up instead of following instructions,” he says lightly. “Wanda, you said no one was here and did another sweep for minds?” he asks.

She nods, “no one, and I made sure to scrub well. Even someone with an enhancement similar to mine wouldn’t be able to get past me. Vision has an infinity stone in his head and _he_ can’t hide from me.”

Tony nods, trusting that. “Good. We might as well check things out still then- Steve and Bucky you check that and Wanda and I will cove this end. We’re all connected via comms so if Wanda finds any minds lingering near you she’ll let you know.” With that he walks off because he had no desire to spend any more time with Steve than he needed to.

Wanda follows him somewhat quickly, catching up in only a few steps as Steve and Bucky head in the opposite direction. “You’re still angry at Steve,” she states more than asks once they were out of earshot. Tony sits in front of a computer and Wanda easily breaks into the filing cabinets.

“Should I not be?” he asks, tapping the keyboard to break into HYDRA’s systems.

“You’ll have to forgive him eventually,” Wanda says and pulls out a stack of papers. Careless, Tony thought, leaving all this stuff behind. Nazis weren’t intelligent, he guessed.

“The hell I do. You don’t keep someone’s parents’ murder a secret from them while you use their cash to go track down their murderer without telling the guy who’s footing the bill and you _definitely_ don’t tell him not to keep secrets while you do it. That kind of thing is unforgivable,” he says. He expects a snappy comment about his own involvement in Wanda’s parents’ deaths and he would have happily told her he certainly wasn’t deserving of forgiveness either but Wanda doesn’t mention her parents.

“You aren’t angry with James and you know he still doesn’t feel guilty about killing your mother,” she points out. “Personally I thought _that_ would be more unforgivable than what Steve did.”

Tony breaks into their systems and starts sorting information immediately. “James’ opinion is formed out of trauma. He sees himself in my position, helpless against his abusers, and he for some reason cased my mother in the role of HYDRA even though she was just as much a victim as I was. I don’t like it but I understand it. I can’t understand why Steve would ever do what he did.”

Wanda tosses a bunch of files aside and picks up a few new ones. “You wouldn’t protect Rhodey like he tried to protect Bucky?” she asks.

“Protection is a loose term for what he did. I still tried to kill Bucky and I did it because I was A- stressed from the Accords not to mention I hadn’t slept in almost three days. And B- I was blind sighted by the fact that my parents were murdered when I thought they were in a run of the mill car accident for the last twenty years. If I were in his position I would have done damage control before that happened and _told_ Steve about Rhodey’s involvement in his parents’ deaths. Give him time to process things before he off and tried to kill the guy out of shock and grief.”

Most of the information on this computer was useless or stuff they already knew though he kept the already known information anyways. FRIDAY might be able to find something in there that could be useful even if it wasn’t to Bucky. Wanda tosses more files aside, “are you saying that because you’d actually do that or because hindsight is twenty-twenty and you already know how things would end if you did something else? Consider Steve’s position,” she says.

She sounded like a fucking therapist though maybe that’s because she was in therapy. Sometimes Bucky whipped this crap out unexpectedly too. He listens though and tries to imagine how he would handle it if Rhodey killed, say, Bucky. It would make sense given that he’s in the military and very well could have run into Bucky and if came down to it he would have killed Bucky. That’s what people in his position did, they made hard decisions. But would he have kept that from Steve?

He thinks about how Steve spent two years looking for Bucky, how it ignited a flame in him that Tony hasn’t ever seen before. He thinks of their history and he shakes his head, “given that Rhodey wouldn’t have killed Steve’s parents because the timeline doesn’t match up I subbed in Bucky. First thing I’d do is make sure it was impossible for Steve to get to Rhodey and I _do_ mean impossible. I’d send him to the damn moon if I needed to. Then I’d tell him because if he found out with Rhodey in the room there would be no way Rhodey would make it out alive and I’d die fighting to save him. It’d be a fucking bloodbath. If I really wanted to protect Rhodey than I’d make sure Steve could try and process what happened the hell away from him.” With Bucky’s and James’ skills Steve wouldn’t have had to worry about Tony finding him and even if he did there was a good chance he would have lost steam by then. If he even had steam to begin with.

Wanda looks surprised to hear this but he suspects that it’s because she can hear the truth of the statement in the way his mind was thinking. It was weird to consider but Wanda had explained to him once that her ability to tap into minds wasn’t something she could help, it was just how her mind worked. Like walking into a room and smelling food cooking, except she could hear minds. She also expressly told him that she didn’t pry. He didn’t think she did mostly because he wouldn’t in her position and also because the last time she really pried into people’s minds one of them nearly ended the world. That, Tony felt, was good incentive to not invade minds without thinking it through first.

“Steve would kill you, you know. If these situations were reversed. He almost killed out in Siberia,” she says. She looks almost… worried about him. “I am. Worried about you,” she clarifies and then winces, “sorry, sometimes I can hear things if you think ‘loud’ and you thought that pretty loudly.”

He figured as much but he doesn’t tell her that, he doesn’t need to. She can hear it. “I know. But I’d die keeping Rhodey safe and if I was lucky he’d calm down some before he tore the world apart trying to find him.”

“I’m not so sure that would happen,” Wanda murmurs, “sometimes I think Steve is more dangerous than the rest of us. We all have weaknesses but none quite so tangible as Bucky is to him. If someone killed him god help their soul.”

Her words echo in his head and he shivers at the implications. He wonders if she knew about how much Steve tore apart the last time Bucky ‘died’, about just how close the Nazis were to winning before Captain America tore them apart all but single-handedly. Steve took on a literal army for Bucky and won. He doesn’t want to think about what would happen if Bucky ever died again.

*

Bucky was nervous and maybe he had a right to be. “You know I’d never let anything happen to you, right?” Steve says, eyeing him intently. This was one of the other reasons he chose _Steve_ to come with him. Tony would leave him to his own devices and normally he appreciated that but when it came to HYDRA he didn’t trust himself. But Steve? He all but tore the world apart looking for him last time, he had no doubt that if something went wrong the sorry bastards that were on the other end of his skills wouldn’t find themselves alive long enough to try and brainwash him again. Steve would die before he let that happen.

It was downright selfish and maybe even a little cruel of him but his own fear was stronger than his fear that Steve would actually die. He’s seen the kinds of things Steve would do, and he knew what he was capable of as well with his enhancement. He didn’t think anything too drastic would actually happen but he also knew how over attached Steve was to him. He was as good as protection got.

Besides, they both heard the ‘ _again_ ’ tacked onto his proclamation that he wouldn’t let Bucky get hurt even if he didn’t outright say it.

“That doesn’t make me less nervous,” he says honestly.

Steve considers things for a moment, standing in the middle of the room they were in doing noting while Bucky jimmied a filing cabinet open. “Do you think this is a trap?” he asks.

Bucky shakes his head, “if it was we’d already be dealing with it. HYDRA rarely does subtle when it comes to that kind of thing.” He knew, he’s had to set up more than enough traps for them.

When Steve realizes he’s doing nothing he quickly jumps in to help. Bucky knew that Tony didn’t want him here and not just because of his intense hatred of the guy either; he knew Steve would react exactly like he was now. He was slow to help and very distracted thanks to Bucky’s presence. And it helped that it was _Bucky_. If it were James he wouldn’t be nearly as distracted as he was now. James thought Steve didn’t acknowledge his existence because he was too hung up on Bucky but he was only half right. He acknowledged James was there alright; he just didn’t want to admit it out loud because if he did he would have to accept that Bucky wasn’t… well _his_ Bucky. He should probably be glad he didn’t kiss James that one time or he would have gotten punched.

He continues searching through files and Steve goes through a few things but Bucky can tell he’s distracted. He probably wasn’t so distracted that he’d outright miss something but he isn’t giving the files his all.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Steve tells him, apparently deciding _now_ was a good time to talk. “You’re not wrong. About me being different, and you being different too. What happened to us?” he asks more to himself than Bucky.

“War. HYDRA. Time and distance. James. Lots of things happened to us but I don’t think any of it was necessarily a bad thing. I mean the war and torture and all that was obviously horrible but I don’t know, I like it here in the future. People don’t treat women like they did before, Peggy would have loved it. And there’s all that stuff for queer people, and Morita wouldn’t have had to deal with so much crap for being Japanese. There’s a lot of stuff that still sucks but there are also snakes in hats.” They were so damn cute; he had no idea why people were afraid of them.

Steve frowns, “snakes in hats?”

“Yeah, Google them when you get home,” he says. “They’re cute. Also ‘Steve Rogers Sparkle’,” he says. He had recently discovered that there was a Captain America version of the Iron Man one and that was just awesome. Steve looked almost as good with a flower crown as Tony did, except Bucky liked the contrast of Tony’s hair with the colors of the flowers more than Steve’s blonde.

“‘Steve Rogers Sparkle’? What is that?” he asks, frowning.

Bucky grins, “one of many wonders of the future.” He still maintained that ordering food online was the best way to order food and if he was _really_ lazy he got FRIDAY to pay and one of the bots to bring him the food. In his time, or at the time he was from, that wasn’t the kind of thing that was possible. Lots of people complained of laziness but Bucky thought that kind of leisure was nice, especially because it wasn’t possible in his time. There was so much about the future that he loved so he had no idea why Steve couldn’t adjust to it.

Steve gives him a sad smile and they continue going though the files, making their way from room to room until they get meet up with Wanda and Tony. They must have been moving at the same pace. “Find anything?” Tony asks him. He doesn’t even look at Steve.

“Nothing useful,” he says.

Tony sighs, “well, one room left. Might as well-” his words are cut off as someone smashes through a window. Steve grabs Bucky and yanks him back, stepping in front of him quickly. Tony rolls his eyes at him, “hey kid.”

“Hey!” Peter says, waving. “Nice to see you again Cap. I’m used to the suit now!”

Steve gives Tony an annoyed look, “I take it this was the fifth idiot who can’t follow instructions?”

“Like father like son. Lets go kid, there’s only one room left to check and we’ve found nothing so you might as well run free,” Tony says, waving him ahead.

Peter’s eyes go a wide as Steve’s, “wow, really? Awesome!”

“He’s your _son_?” Steve says, shocked.

Tony makes a face at Steve, “no dumbass I just said that and yes really kid, it’s not like you’ll find anything we haven’t.”

Peter jumps up and down a little, “I am so excited, thank you so much I am going to- oh my god you have _so many_ grey hairs!” he says as he skips ahead, stopping in front of Tony as his suits eyes go wide.

Tony gives him a _withering_ glare, “don’t think I won’t smack you kid,” he says. He’s bluffing out his ass but he doesn’t look impressed with his grey hairs.

“There’s so many though, I haven’t noticed them before,” Peter says, leaning over Tony a little.

“Why are you taller than me you’re a child? You know what, get into that room and go make yourself useful,” Tony tells him, flicking the spider suit’s eye. The eye flickers and Peter shakes his head to set it right again.

“Ouch! Don’t flick my eye!”

“I flicked your suit’s eye, go check out the room,” Tony tells him, shooing him into the last space they had to check. Peter sighs and walks off into his room and Tony sighs.

“I’m telling FRIDAY to pick up hair dye when I get home,” he mumbles.

“Hey!” Peter calls from the room, “did you guys find anything about Black Widows everywhere else?” he asks.

Tony and Wanda exchange a glance and go to the room, Steve and Bucky on his heels. Of course the _last_ room is what actually has something in it. “Guess this was something of a trap after all,” Steve says as they look around at the open files on the Widows.

“Whoa! You _trained_ the Black Widows?” Peter asks, mask eyes wide again.

Bucky frowns and tries to remember. He walks over to one of the files and suddenly remembers, barely, blocking the hits of women he was attempting to train. No, James was… no him. Both maybe, he wasn’t sure. “I guess so,” he says softly.

Steve’s head turns sharply to him, “you trained Natasha?” he asks.

“No,” Bucky says immediately, “I stopped training them in the December of nineteen sixty two, that’s before Natasha’s time in the program.”

“How do you-” Steve starts but Tony cuts him off.

“Hey, go wait outside okay? We’ll clean this up, it won’t take long,” Tony says softly and Bucky lets out a bunch of tension he didn’t realize he was holding in his frame. He walks away without a second glace backwards. Tony’s suit is already outside so Bucky sits with it and breathes in and out slowly, letting the panic that he’s been holding back come forward finally.

“You okay?” Peter asks, making him jump. “I’ll take that as a no. It’s okay to have panic attacks though, I get them sometimes. They started after my uncle got shot,” he says, sitting beside him.

“That’s awful, kid,” he says softly.

Peter shrugs, “yeah it is. But if you need someone to talk to I’ll get it.”

He can’t help but smile at that. “Thanks, but Tony gets panic attacks too and he has experience with torture. He’d probably get more than you do. I hope you never have to understand my situation as I do.”

“Me too,” Peter says softly. “Do you like memes?” he asks in a chipper tone a few moments later.

“Duh,” Bucky says and Peter pulls out the _greatest_ existential depression memes Bucky has ever seen. He decides he needs to spend time on the site that Peter frequents because the meme quality was _excellent_.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one might be wrapping up soon! There's a couple more things I want to deal with and then I think this little sucker will come to a close!

James feels like he’s been asleep for the last three days and, he supposes, technically he has. Actually it was almost a week since the last time he’s been in control and Tony looks surprisingly relieved. “Uh, hey?” James says, rubbing his eyes and sitting on the couch.

“You’re back, I was getting worried. Usually you and Bucky rotate every couple days but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen you,” he says. This surprises James because for some reason he didn’t think Tony would worry about him. “Why do you look so surprised? This isn’t normal for you or Bucky; of course I’d be worried about you. I guess after yesterday this makes sense though,” he says softly.

The HYDRA raid, yes. James had only the vaguest of notions of what happened and he guesses that’s technically good. It meant Bucky was getting stronger mentally, the only reason James knew what was going on before was because Bucky was always one step away from fading back into his own mind so James could take over. “I guess so. This feels weird,” he mumbles.

Tony shifts over some and presses his hand to James’ thigh, something he’d never do with Bucky. It was amazing to him that Tony could always tell who was who when almost no one else could. The therapist could, even that one time James pretended to be Bucky because he didn’t want to talk about his own problems. Actually he’s tried it a few times with the therapist _and_ Tony and neither of them fell for it. Everyone else would. “Are you alright?” Tony asks softly.

He thinks about it. _Was_ he alright? He concludes that he’s fine for the most part; it was just odd to be out of control for so long because Bucky usually hit a trigger of his long before now. Even now he still went through the entire situation and went to bed himself, James just happened to wake up. “Yeah I guess,” he says eventually.

Tony doesn’t look like he believes him. “Maybe so but something is bothering you. Bucky is the one that acts like a grump when he wakes up. Also Rocco is pissed that you’ve been gone and the damn devil dog _ate_ another one of my pillows. It isn’t my fault you were gone! I don’t know why he acts like I’ve personally slighted him when you’re gone,” Tony mumbles, glaring in the direction of the hallway that Rocco usually sleeps in.

James laughs, “I’ve missed my dog. But I guess… what if this happens all the time? Bucky taking control for a long time?”

“What if you fade away,” Tony corrects, wording his fears that James was too afraid to. “I don’t think you will for the record. You’re an entire established personality, is it even _possible_ for you to just disappear?”

Yes it was. “That’s how Dissociative Identity Order is ‘cured’, didn’t you know? Integrate the personalities back together.”

He isn’t sure what he expects Tony’s reaction to be but it isn’t laughter, “yeah then there’s no worries about you disappearing. You could never mesh with Bucky’s meme loving ways.”

James snorts, “yeah I guess not,” he says even though he isn’t entirely convinced. What if Bucky chose to go that route? And how come it was _James_ that had to be erased? What made Bucky’s life more important than his own? How come _he_ was considered the problem personality? Well actually he knew the answer to that last bit but still, he was a whole person and even if he shared a body with Bucky he didn’t think he should be thought of as the one someone could erase as a ‘cure’. Cure to _whom_ , exactly? James thought of it more as murder really, even if there would be no physical body someone was still dying. But apparently it was ethical because he was considered a mental illness. He wondered if therapists would feel the same way if _they_ were the ones who had to die so someone else could be stamped normal and passed along into society.

“Rocco would be pissed and Bucky and I don’t like the dog so if he doesn’t want that damn dog raising hell he’ll at least wait till Rocco dies to get rid of you. Its not like we can do anything else with him,” Tony points out.

“You could rehome the dog,” James points out.

“I’m not going to rehome the dog, I took the dog in I have to deal with it until he dies that’s how pet ownership works. He missed you too by the way. He sat there for an entire day and whined at Bucky, which would have been cute and hilarious if we weren’t so annoyed with him by noon.” James could imagine, Rocco’s whining grated _his_ nerves and he had more patience for Rocco than Tony or Bucky did. Poor dog, stuck in a house where the freaks in it preferred the stupid cat.

“Cat must have been happy,” he says.

Tony shakes his head, “the cat was confused. She’s used to you two switching too so the poor cat was so suspicious of Bucky. It meant I got to pet her more though so I didn’t mind.” He grins and James shakes his head. Only Tony.

“Wow, didn’t expect the lack of my presence to cause such a fuss,” he says.

Something in the way he says that must tip Tony off or something because he sobers a little and squeezes his thigh again. “James, I know you think that everyone views you through Bucky and you’re not entirely wrong in saying that, Steve is easily the worst offender. But I don’t see you that way, or I do my best not to anyways. It’s not hard when you two are so different. You have people that care about _you_ specifically. _I_ care about you. I miss you when you’re gone and I like it when you’re here and when you’re gone for a long time I worry about you. I worry about Bucky too because neither of you are used to him being in control for so long and that might not be very good for either one of you.”

He wondered about that too because Bucky’s big decisions usually involved dinner and now they apparently involved raiding HYDRA bases. That was a pretty large step up and he wondered if that would set Bucky back in his attempts to get through his problems. He hoped not. James sort of wished he had made Bucky stay home but when he said he wanted to go Tony didn’t seem intent on stopping him. Whatever his reasons James thought he was wrong, Bucky shouldn’t be in situations like that. They should have waited until he was back, he could handle that and Bucky couldn’t.

 _Thanks for the faith asshole. I’m going to wear that Steve Rogers Sparkle shirt to the god park with your leather jacket so everyone thinks it’s you wearing it_ Bucky thinks at him. Something must show on his face because Tony looks curious but there was no way he was telling him about that stupid Steve Rogers shirt Bucky insisted on buying.

Instead he changes the subject. “Did you dye your hair?” he asks and Tony touches his hair.

“How did you know?” he asks, sounding a little self-conscious.

“The dye is black and your hair is dark brown. Might have turned out darker because of the greys though,” he says and Tony _glares_ at him.

“You know what, I lied, I don’t care about you at all, you can cuddle with your dog tonight,” he says and walks off. James just laughs and shakes his head at Tony’s antics.

*

“So,” Wanda says, “Black Widows. Natasha says she doesn’t even know most of these Widows and that they must have graduated before her time.”

‘Graduated’ was a nice way to put exiting that program but okay, now Tony knew Natasha was as clueless as he was. “Why are they all women?” Peter asks.

James raises an eyebrow, “why wouldn’t they be all women?”

“Because this program was started in the fifties and everyone in the fifties was at least a little bit sexist. How come they decided to use women when most people wouldn’t have thought that women were even capable of the espionage and fighting that the Widows do,” he says.

That… is an interesting point. If the group was all men no one would question it but there would have had to have been a reason to have a group of women in this time period. “Maybe they heard about Peggy Carter,” Tony suggests. Peggy Carter was all sorts of good at her job; even Howard had admitted so though Tony never saw much of her. Apparently back in the day they were close or at least that’s what his mom used to say. Tony always wondered if Peggy stopped coming around because of how Howard was with… well near everyone but mostly his mom and him. He couldn’t imagine a woman like Peggy Carter putting up with Howard for long if anything he heard about her was true. She was strong and unwilling to let anyone put her down for being a woman or a person in a position of power. Tony doubted that mixed well with Howard’s attitudes. Still, she did what was considered the impossible so maybe these people thought that they could train others to be like her.

Peter shakes his head, “everyone still claims she was an exception to the rule that women can’t do this kind of work. So why no men? What did women have to offer than men didn’t? And did they ever even try this with men? Maybe they thought women would be easier to brainwash,” he says, frowning at the files.

“That makes no sense, they had a completely brainwashed male assassin working for them,” Tony points out, “they knew men were as easy to control as women would be if pushed hard enough. Maybe-” he starts but Wanda cuts him off.

“James has remembered something,” she says softly, looking over at him. Even Peter would have been able to tell that something just clicked for James and he barely knew the guy. He looks a little pale and distant as memories seem to play through his mind and they all wait for him to say something.

“They did have a male version of this program. It was called the ‘Wolf Spider’ program and it failed,” he says softly.

 _That_ gets a reaction. “But when was this?” Peter asks. “There’s no way any of those people could be around now.”

“Person,” James corrects. “And the Widows are enhanced with some kind of spin off of the super soldier serum so yes, it is actually possible for this guy to be around. Improbable but possible.”

“Weren’t _you_ enhanced with the super soldier serum? Well, a version of it. What if they used your blood like they did with Steve’s and the other Winter Soldiers?” Tony asks.

James shakes his head, “I don’t remember that. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen though.”

“Maybe they didn’t need your blood. When I… I got offered a serum that was supposed to work like the super soldier serum and honestly this explains a lot about Natasha’s stamina. I don’t even think she knows, her mind is so fuzzy when she thinks of that time in her life. Whatever mind control tactics they used on her they worked better than yours,” Wanda says to James. “Still, I agree that it’s possible that this guy is still alive. Even if he isn’t this could be a relative. Either way we finally found out why wolf spiders were so important to this guy, now we just need to figure out what connects him to HYDRA’s goals.”

They all sit there in silence for a few long moments before Selene Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ starts playing from Peter’s phone. He turns bright red and Tony shakes his head, “kids these days have the _worst_ taste in music,” he mumbles.

“One, Cherry Pie is _not_ a better song and two, this is Ned and we have a Spanish test tomorrow so I should probably answer it because I need to study still,” he says, scurrying off to answer his phone. Tony catches a glimpse of the picture on Peter’s screen of Ned and he has to admit that that is one of the worst pictures he has ever seen of the poor kid. Or anyone. He had like twelve chins.

“I can quiz him on Spanish when I give him a ride home, I’m fluent in the language,” Wanda says.

“So am I,” James says.

“Me too,” Tony throws in, “we’re all speaking exclusively in Spanish to the kid until he can hold a decent conversation so he’ll pass this test otherwise Aunt May will kick his ass for not passing that test and the last thing we all need is for her to show up here yelling about Stark Internships that no one really has.” When Peter returns he isn’t impressed to find that no one will speak English to him but Tony has to admit that he wasn’t absolutely horrible at the language. Rhodey was worse easily. Then again no one could be worse at Spanish than Rhodey.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know I'm pretty sure I've never named Bucky/James' therapist? Maybe I did in the first one but I don't remember the name and I keep calling her 'the therapist' now D: Petition to name the therapist!
> 
> Warning for some mentions of torture and murder.

James doesn’t pity Howard Stark as his fist connects with his face one, twice, and a third time to do him in. He can hear his wife whimpering in the car but he doesn’t have much pity for her either. He walks around to her side of the car and doesn’t even bother to open the door; he just reaches in and wraps his arm around her throat. He’s squeezing hard when he hears a small voice from the back seat.

“What are you doing?” the child asks, looking at him with side, brown eyes. He was far younger and so, _so_ much smaller but the child was unmistakably Tony. Without even realizing it his grip on Maria’s throat loosens and he steps back, concerned with Tony’s presence here. He didn’t remember seeing him in the car when this all started. No, he wasn’t there, Tony wasn’t there and this was half of why he chose _now_ to strike. He was sure of it so what was Tony here?

After a brief moment of deliberation he pulls the back door of the car open and leans in to find Tony pressed to the door on the other side looking frightened. “It’s okay,” he says, unable to recognize his own voice, “it’s okay,” he repeats. Tony obviously doesn’t believe him so James leans into the car further. Tony presses himself closer to the door and James is so concerned with trying to calm the child that he doesn’t notice that Tony’s hand was curled around the door handle until he’s toppling out the other side with a small ‘umph!’ as he hits the ground. James pulls himself out of the car immediately and goes to go to Tony because this was the middle of nowhere, where was he going to go?

“Don’t you dare hurt my son!” he hears from behind him and he spins to find Maria on the ground with a gun in her hand pointed at him. Her throat is purple from where his hand was and it had to hurt to talk let alone yell the way she just did but she looks determined. “Don’t you hurt my son,” she repeats and then she pulls the trigger.

James wakes up gasping for air with his heart beating far faster than he knows it should and he can feel that his skin is sticky with sweat. Except for some reason he can’t seem to calm his breathing and that just makes it _worse_. His vision blurs a little and his mind feels fuzzy, like he was having some kind of out of body experience but was still seeing things through his own eyes. It was a bizarre feeling.

Logically he knows he needs to calm his breathing but he just couldn’t seem to grasp enough air and it almost hurt coming in, like his air ways were being crushed by something even though they were free. “Hey,” he hears, barely, from far away. “James. _James_!” He turns towards the noise and finds Tony looking at him with wide eyes and all it does is send him into a new round of what he now recognized as panic. He was having a panic attack. He never had panic attacks; those were Bucky’s thing.

“James,” Tony says again but he doesn’t dare look over again, knowing that Tony’s wide eyes and fear will only remind him of that damn dream. After a long few moments that were filled only with James’ ragged breathing he hears Tony leave the bed to go do something. Its another long few moments before he hears a small ‘woof’ and a dip in the bed as Rocco jumps on it. the dog regards him for a moment before he lays down beside him, resting his head on James and looking up at him with wide brown eyes that, thankfully, don’t remind him of Tony’s.

He pets the dog slowly, trying to time the beats with his petting Rocco’s fur because that’s what Bucky did with the cat and surprisingly it works and Rocco feels useful, James can tell. Tony doesn’t come back for some time but when he does he has water. He notices the dog, Rocco was impossible to miss with his size, but for once he doesn’t complain about the dog in the bed. “Are you alright? I mean all things considered, obviously you aren’t alright in general,” Tony says, looking annoyed with himself for asking such a stupid question. Normally James would agree but this time he just sighs.

“I… had a dream,” he says eventually.

*

Just when things went quite on the wolf spider front things kicked up everywhere else. Tony swore he couldn’t catch a goddamn break but that’s what happened, he guessed, when he decided to fund the Winter Soldier trial. Christine had done several interviews with Bucky and James regarding their existence mostly as well as some stuff on their involvement in the Winter Soldier assassinations that were set to be released right around the first court date.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” Wanda asks. She looks worried and so was Tony. Christine might have taken his side so to speak in the Civil War argument but she still spent most of the article explaining in detail how much he sucked. If she decided to do the same thing with Bucky and James… well that isn’t about to go well for anyone. Tony didn’t get the impression that’s what she was about to do but she didn’t seem like she was about to write about his failures either given how shocked she was to learn about Steve’s indiscretions.

“I don’t know, the therapist doesn’t think it’s a good idea but I left it up to Bucky and James. It’s their lives,” he says. Sure he could have given them a decision on the subject either way and they would have listened but that wasn’t his choice to make. He’s learned his lesson in trying to make other people’s choices for them even if he thought they would agree with him. It was best to leave it to them.

Wanda sighs, “well I suppose we’ll see what Christine decides by morning, won’t we? I didn’t detect any malice in her mind if that helps,” she says.

“You didn’t detect any malice for me when she printed that Civil War article either but she still spent a good portion of it ripping me a new one,” he points out. It wasn’t unwarranted either, it’s not like he _hadn’t_ made all the mistakes she highlighted in the article but it still kind of hurt to read. The public already knew about all of that stuff minus Siberia though so it wasn’t like she didn’t point out anything they hadn’t already gathered. It was all the stuff on Steve that everyone didn’t know about and it was that stuff that they focused on. It also helped that Christine outright stated she had concerns with Tony but had far more concerns about Steve.

“I suppose that’s true. James is still around though, do you think it’s a good idea for _him_ to be the first person anyone talks to?” she asks.

Tony shakes his head, “no, they’re mostly gong over evidence and all that before they get into actual testimonies. The lawyer already knows about James so it’s not like this will come as a surprise to him but everyone else will be scrambling. I wonder if Christine timed it like that on purpose,” he says as it occurs to him that a good way to ensure a win was to completely screw over half the evidence against the defendant. Maybe Christine _had_ taken Bucky and James’ side in all of this. He didn’t expect the lawyers to be scrambled long but it would alter the way the way the entire rest of the trial continued.

“Good,” Wanda says, “because James and Bucky don’t deserve to go to jail. I think that if I got a pardon and citizenship to this country after _willingly_ joining HYDRA than James and Bucky should too.”

Tony agreed but this was all up to the courts and the jury so he had no clue how this was going to go.

*

“I’ve had that dream three times this week and it always ends the same,” James says, frustrated with himself. The dream wasn’t _new_ per se but it never had him waking up in panic attacks before and those things were exhausting. How did Bucky function back when his life was basically one long panic attack? Right, he didn’t, James did most things for him and called him weak and whiny for not being able to function. Lately he was getting a new appreciation for Bucky’s strength in that time in his life. Tony had been gracious about it thankfully and after the third time it happened he finally filled Tony in on what the dream was about. His confusion had helped some because he hadn’t been a child when he killed Howard and Maria, meaning the dream was an impossibility.

It wasn’t until Tony points that out that James realizes that he was right and that the dream wasn’t a resurfaced memory. It was something he should have known right away given that Tony didn’t know his parents were murdered and he took over the company not long after. If Tony were roughly seven when his parents were killed that wouldn’t be possible. Nine year olds weren’t competent in running companies like SI.

“So the dream ends with Maria telling you not to hurt her son?” the therapist asks, head tilted to the side.

“And I wake up in a panic, yeah,” he says. “Is there some like magic psychological cure for stupid dreams? Because I want it.”

The therapist laughs, “no, there is no magical psychological cure for nightmares. Actually dreams and why we have them are something of a mystery to us still. One of the leading theories is that dreams allow us to solve problems that we’re having in real life. So James, are you having some kind of problem in real life that this dream seems to reflect?” she asks.

She did that a lot, asked questions. She didn’t do that with Bucky, mostly they just talked. It irritated him. “I’ve got plenty of problems but none of them have anything to do with Tony almost dying,” he says.

This gets an eyebrow raise from the therapist. “ _That’s_ what you’ve chosen to focus on?” she asks, obviously surprised.

“Well yeah, he wasn’t supposed to be there and he wasn’t even seven at the time. I don’t kill kids,” he says, shivering. There were lines even the brainwashed didn’t cross. Or at least that was the case with him, not that he got child targets all that often. Usually there were instructions to kill the family but he always managed to find a way to get the kids out of it. Sleepovers were a blessing.

“Of all the things you could have taken from that I’m surprised you would focus on _Tony_ ,” she says.

James frowns, “why wouldn’t I?”

“Perhaps because there were dozens of other more important details than Tony’s presence in the dream. For one you didn’t kill one of your targets, one that seems intent on killing you by the end of the dream. Not completing your mission would have some nasty consequences for you, not to mention being shot could potentially kill you even with your enhancement. Yet you focus on Tony. Why is that?” she asks.

Back to the stupid questions again. “I told you, he wasn’t supposed to be there,” James repeats.

“But why let Maria go? Why not kill her and then deal with him? Why so much worry for him when even in your dream you acknowledge he had nowhere to go? There was no reason for you to break character so to speak so why did you?” She thinks she’s on to something, he can tell, but he has no idea what.

“Because I had to get him out of there, he wasn’t supposed to be there.” He was beginning to sound like a broken record, something he now had a reference for after he and Peter accidentally ruined one of Tony’s records and then buried it in a pile with strict instructions to FRIDAY to keep her dirty mouth shut. Before that the saying was somewhat lot on him but now it was apt.

“Who were you trying to get Tony away from?” she asks.

He opens his mouth and then closes hit because that was a good question. Howard had been dead and Maria wasn’t far off from joining him. “Me,” he says after a few very long moments of silence. “I was saving him from me.”

“And why did you need to save him from you if you knew you had no intention of killing him?” she asks.

“I… I don’t know,” he finally says, frowning.

“You know of Tony’s history of abuse long after his parents were dead, yes?” she asks and he nods. “Perhaps, and you can tell me if my theory here is wrong because you know you better than I do, this dream is a manifestation of guilt. You often hold Maria responsible at least in part for not saving Tony from Howard’s abuse, but you now know that the abuse didn’t stop there. Maybe you weren’t trying to save Tony from yourself; maybe you were holding yourself responsible for not saving Tony when you had the chance. Maria told you not to hurt her son twice and nearly killed you; perhaps your subconscious chose her as an accusatory figure because of the way you hold her responsible for Tony’s abuse. It’s a powerful image,” she says.

He thinks it over and she lets him, giving him plenty of time and space to think. “I should have saved him,” he says eventually and the therapist shakes her head.

“You can’t hold yourself responsible for other people’s actions, James. And you needed saving yourself, you were in no position to be saving anyone else,” she says softly.

James thinks of Tony’s wide eyes from the dream, from the fear that was there. There was determination too, and intelligence. Would real seven year old Tony react like that? He doubted it, most children did a lot of crying before they thought to try and escape someone they just watched murder their father.

“I don’t know if I hold myself responsible for Tony’s later abuse,” James says, “more like I hold myself responsible for all the pain I caused him when I killed his parents. I could have prevented all that,” he says. And if he had defected sooner and taken Tony away none of that other stuff would have happened either. So in a way he was responsible for just about everything that went wrong in Tony’s life but he doesn’t tell the therapist that. He knows she’d just deny the truth anyways.

“No James, you would have been tortured and sent back out to kill the Starks again. You didn’t have the free will and agency that you do now so it makes no sense to hold yourself responsible for Tony’s parents’ murder. You were, unfortunately, more of the blunt instrument that did them in, not the person who made the immoral call to kill them,” she points out.

James sits back in his chair and puts out that usual attitude of his, the flippant one that was similar to Tony’s now that he thought about it. “Is that what you’re going to say in court? That I wasn’t really responsible after all? Because both Bucky and I wouldn’t agree,” he says.

She sighs, “both of you feel the need to take responsibility for your actions without considering the context in which you made them because you both feel horribly guilty for what you’ve done. You started having panic attacks recently out of guilt for one of your victims and you’ve never had them before. The court and the jury are going to be looking for any sign that it was _you_ who committed those crimes rather than HYDRA. It’s my professional opinion that neither your or Bucky had much of a choice in what you did. People have done more horrible things than you with less coercion and gotten away with it. Holding you or Bucky responsible for the crimes you had no choice but to commit would be a mistake.”

He didn’t agree and he had a sneaking suspicion that Bucky wouldn’t either but he keeps that too himself. When he’s finally released from his therapy session Tony is there waiting for him and James feels strangely relieved to see him there. He hugs Tony tightly and Tony hugs him back, gently rubbing his back in a way he certainly didn’t deserve but he accepts anyways. No one can ever claim he wasn’t selfish.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm only going to do another couple chapters to this and then I'm going to leave it off, we will see...

Tony has probably read Christine’s article about fifty times by now and unlike the one about the ‘Civil War’ there was no space for criticizing Bucky or James. The closest she got to that was examining the confusion Bucky first felt when he had been found again by Steve. She spent a good deal of her article explaining all the ways in which Bucky was a victim, how James came to exist, and how he had been victimized too. The public received it well and Steve had called Bucky- James had been the one to answer- and grudgingly admitted that maybe Tony had the right idea in contacting Christine. He knew he did, which was why he did it. Anyone who knew anything about attempting to sway or control the masses knew that finding a way to control the media was an easy route to do that. Tony had taken a risk with Christine in particular given that she liked to print whatever she wanted, but he knew there would be no way she could have sided with anyone but Bucky and James.

With the start of Bucky’s trial it was crucial to know where people stood. Public opinion could go a long way towards a win. There were no guarantees here but Tony was doing his best.

“So,” Wanda says, interrupting his musings, “has anything changed with HYDRA?”

He shakes his head, “no. I’m still lost on what they could have possibly wanted and why they changed tactics,” he says.

Wanda shrugs, “maybe you’re overthinking it. I think that they want their assassin back,” she says.

“Then why all this wolf spider mess? We now know that they wanted Bucky to remember the program but for what reason? And how come spiders weren’t relevant from the beginning of them chasing after him? Too much is unanswered if they just wanted their assassin back,” he points out.

“Maybe the spider thing was a way to stamp a name on it. It’s not unheard of, you do it all the time,” she says. So he did though it wasn’t usually purposeful, he just happened to have a style and it just happened to leave a mark. This was more deliberate and thought out than that. He doesn’t bother filling Wanda in on his thoughts because he can see that she heard them. “I’m not trying to,” she tells him, apparently having heard that he knew she heard.

“I know, Wanda. I walk into a room and smell things; you walk into a room and hear things. You can’t help picking up the stray thoughts or at least that’s how I understand it.” Tony had no idea how the hell she could handle that, Bucky and James reported that they were nearly unable to handle each other in their head. Wanda heard everyone within… he wasn’t sure what her radius was but having more than one voice in there had to suck.

“It does,” Wanda confirms, “when I first got my powers I thought I was going crazy. I could hear things for miles and I couldn’t block it out, the voices threatened to take over. Surprisingly the electroshock therapy helped. It gave me something else to focus on for a moment and eventually I learned to control it without that. The only one I know who understands what that feels like, other voices in your head, is Bucky. Well, James too but Bucky has more experience with it.”

“You can hear for _miles_?” Tony asks, shocked. Fuck that, he’d shoot himself before he lived with that crap. He couldn’t stand his own voice in his head, there was no way he’d be able to handle hundreds of others in there too.

Wanda nods, “if I try. When I first got my powers it was everything all at once, my full potential or that’s what they said. Thankfully I usually limit myself to the space of a room or so but in the compound or here it’s still a lot of space, which usually means a lot of voices.”

He never really considered that, how it felt to hear the voices of all her teammates usually all at once. Must be annoying if he and Steve were bickering like usual. “Can you hear the cat?” he asks, nodding to Americat, who was lounging on the back of the couch. Across the room Rocco watched in jealousy but he got his own little doggy couch so he could shove it, the cat had to share.

Wanda snorts, “I’m not Dr. Doolittle,” she says. “Though I can hear the buzzing of animal minds. I just don’t know what any of it means because I don’t know how to interpret animal feelings. And they _do_ have feelings.”

“Aren’t they pretty much the same as human feelings? I mean when Rocco eats my pillows and I bust his ass I _know_ he’s guilty even if he only feels remorse because I caught him.” Otherwise Tony was sure he’d blame the cat or he’d try.

“No, animals think differently than humans. Whatever their feelings are they aren’t like ours, not exactly. But yes, Rocco does feel guilty when you catch him with the pillows, that one isn’t hard to miss. Usually I tune animals out though, they don’t think as loud as humans unless they’re scared or excited,” she says. “The cat is usually pretty excited when you come home even if she doesn’t show it.”

Damn right she was, Tony was telling James that when he got home. He thought the cat was an evil little beast but clearly she had feelings and she liked Tony so poo poo on him. “You should tell James that. Also shouldn’t he be home soon?”

Wanda shrugs, “he probably got distracted by something stupid. Remember that time Bucky got lost in the pop section of the grocery store because he had no idea there were so many flavors?”

Yeah, Bucky did weird stuff like that all the time. And then there was that time he was offended about bananas and he and Steve bonded over it for awhile. Tony has seen people get offended at some pretty stupid stuff but ranting for two hours about _bananas_ had to be the funniest thing he’s seen someone get defensive over. That and the time Steve said snakes in hats were creepy and Bucky stopped speaking to him for forty minutes so Tony got stuck trying to deal with Avengers business to pass the time because Steve didn’t take the hint and leave.

“Yeah, lets hope he hasn’t done anything stupid,” Tony says.

*

Tony loved James really, but sometimes he had to wonder about the guy. “Nazis?” Steve says, frowning.

He nods, “Nazis. He’s been ranting about them for like three hours and refuses to talk to Wanda about the subject for what I think are obvious reasons and honestly I’m out of my depth. I mean yeah I hate Nazis but I don’t have the right context to even understand where he’s coming from and you do. It’s not like I grew up in a world that was being taken over by Nazis only to find people think they’re relevant now,” he says. Tony had done his best to calm James down but ultimately he decided that the only one who would know where he was coming from in earnest would be Steve.

Steve raises an eyebrow, “are you saying that I’m better suited to deal with Bucky?” he asks. His tone is almost a gloat so Tony rolls his eyes.

“No, you’re better suited to deal with _James_ in this particular moment. But yes, unlike some people I’m looking at I know when I’m out of my depth and know to consult an expert on the subject. Go deal with James,” he says, making a shooing motion at him.

Steve still looks pleased with himself and Tony lets him have it this one time. It’s not like it was a regular thing and he guessed if he were in Steve’s position and for whatever reason Steve related to Rhodey now more than he did and he finally got a moment where that was reversed he’d be pleased with himself too. He opens the door and James whirls around and looks at Tony, ignoring Steve altogether. “If they wanted to bring something back from the nineteen forties they should have brought back men’s fashion! Or Peggy Carter! Not _Nazis_!”

Tony snorts and covers his mouth knowing that James didn’t consider it a joke even if it was funny. “Trust me, I know how you feel. Probably pretty similar to when I found out about HYDRA being involved in near everything,” Steve says.

James glares at Steve for a moment and Tony decides now was a good time to jump in, “James, he’s the only other person I could think of that wasn’t two days away from death who would actually know how you felt. I don’t get it, not like you do. Steve does, he was there. With you. well, Bucky, but you get the point,” he says.

James considers this for a moment and squints at Steve, “how do _you_ feel about the Nazis?”

Steve looks at him like he thinks that’s a stupid question and Tony doesn’t blame him, “I can’t stand Nazis. I watched them just about win a war let alone all the other horrible things they did. I can’t believe that people could sympathize with those monsters.” Tony either, but he didn’t have the firsthand knowledge those two did.

“And the fact that apparently Nazis feel save walking around and people will _defend_ them?” James asks.

“Disgusting,” Steve shakes his head. “I don’t understand, everyone I know thinks that World War Two was horrible and what happened in those concentration camps was disgusting. How could anyone think different? And why are people acting like people have a right to having these beliefs? Do they not know about World War Two?” he asks.

James nods, “we fought a whole war to get rid of these assholes and now people want to give ‘em a chance? What the hell! I maintain that if we’re going to be doing some throwback Thursday thing then we should find a way to bring back Peggy Carter.” Steve nods and the two of them start off on a rant about Nazis so Tony leaves, confident that they wouldn’t start a super soldier smack down in his living room and scare the animals.

He didn’t feel entirely comfortable leaving James with Steve but of the two James was more willing to tell Steve off if needed. That and Tony knew that someone who understood where he was coming from and when he was pissed off he wanted someone who knew how felt talking to him, not someone who was only half informed. Besides, Bucky has been trying to reconnect with Steve and Steve had a hard time with the whole James existing thing so maybe this would help. They had common ground here so maybe being able to put aside their differences to rant about their mutual hatred of Nazis would do some good in the long run.

While Steve dealt with James and Nazis Tony figured he’d pay Rhodey a visit. It’s been awhile since he’s seen his best friend and he missed him.

*

Peter is sitting in class ignoring his phone going off like crazy while Ned passes him notes asking ridiculous questions about his powers. No he didn’t lay eggs, no he hasn’t just shot off a web to see how far it could go, no he could not summon a horde of spiders to do his bidding so no, he would not be able to control Australia’s gigantic spiders and take over the world. Ned decided that he should be renamed ‘can stick to the wall kind of like a spider-man’ because he could barely do spider things. He wasn’t wrong but Peter wasn’t in the business of rebranding himself just because Ned thought he was barely spider-like.

“Dude,” Ned whispers, “turn your phone off for something it keeps going off.”

He whispers a quick apology and takes out the phone, nearly flipping a table when he realizes that it’s Wanda’s number calling him. He all but flies out of his desk, momentarily forgetting he was in class, and everyone turns to stare at him. “Um. I gotta go to the bathroom,” he says.

“You can wait,” the teacher tells him but Peter doesn’t have time for that. Wanda never called, _no one_ ever called. Usually Tony left him to his own devices unless he had to go check out some creepy spiders or HYDRA was following him around.

“No, I have to go now because um… I have explosive diarrhea,” he says, thinking of the next best excuse besides ‘I nave to change my tampon’. He didn’t get periods anymore anyways; everyone would know that was a lie. As it was the whole class reacted the same way they would have if he said he had to change his tampon anyways not that he cared, he was all but out of the room before Flash made some snide comment and Ned was feigning diarrhea too.

“Hey, wait up!” Ned calls after him, running to keep up. Thanks to his super strength Peter could run way faster than normal but Ned was perpetually on Fat Boy Time so he slows himself.

“What are you doing?” he hisses as soon as Ned catches up.

“Dude, this is some Avengers business, I can tell! Let me in on it, I can be your guy in the chair! Like Wade to your Kim Possible!” he says.

Peter frowns, “I’m not Kim Possible!” he says, taking offense.

Ned rolls his eyes, “you know I’m not comparing you to her because I think you’re a girl you twit, it was either that or Ron and I think you’re way more badass than Ron,” he says.

“I always wanted to be Shego,” Peter says.

“Shego’s a bad guy, you can’t be Shego. Whatever, who cares? Point is I’m your guy in the chair so answer the phone and we’ll like… do things,” he says excitedly. Wanda chooses then to call back for probably the fiftieth time and Peter ducks into the only gender neutral bathroom the school had, dragging Ned in there too. It was a single room with a single toilet so they didn’t have to worry about anyone overhearing like they would in the boy’s bathroom.

“Um hey, what’s up?” Peter says, trying to go for casual and failing if Ned’s face was any indication.

“Peter? Why the hell didn’t you answer your phone the first time I called?” Wanda asks. She sounds a bit panicked but Peter shrugs it off for the moment.

“I was in history and we were learning about the Cold War. I had to take notes,” he says. Ned looks at him like he’s stupid and Peter totally resents that. Was he _not_ supposed to take notes?

“Shit,” Wanda swears, “I forgot you were a freaking fetus. When we find Tony I’m asking him why he recruited someone who has barely left the womb. You haven’t seen him, have you? Tony?” she asks.

Ned and Peter exchange a glance, “what do you mean ‘have you seen Tony’? Why would I have seen him? It’s not like he hangs out at high schools and if he does than I think we have some other issues to worry about,” he points out.

“You haven’t seen him?” Wanda asks.

“That’s what I said. Is he like… missing?” Peter asks.

“Since yesterday night and none of us noticed. You’re _sure_ you haven’t heard anything at all from him? Not even a text or something?” Wanda asks. Peter pulls the phone away from his and Ned’s ears and quickly puts Wanda on speakerphone while he checks his messages.

“Nothing,” he says. “The last message I got from him was about the spider thing and we’re way past that.”

Wanda sighs, “well thanks I suppose. I’ll call you if anything happens,” she says and with that she hangs up.

Peter sighs and leans against a wall wondering where the hell Tony could have gone or who had him. “Well what are we going to do?” Ned asks and Peter frowns.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Ned looks at him for a long moment and sighs, “Peter, we have to find Tony. We’d get major brownie points! You have his cell number, right? We can try and trace it,” Ned says and Peter perks up, happy that his friend thought of this.

“Awesome. Let’s go to the media lab, no one ever uses those!” he says and they set off.

Roughly forty minutes later and no leads on Tony’s phone some teacher walks in and asks what they’re doing. Ned and Peter, because neither of them were good at excuses, tell the damn teacher they were watching porn.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, I'm wrapping this sucker up next chapter! It's a little rougher than I'd like it to be, but this story has run its course. I may add on to this series at a later date to conclude Bucky/James' trial and all that but we will see.

Tony wakes up with a headache and he can’t tell if he’s annoyed or angry or both. “If you guys wanted to take me out the least you could have done is buy me dinner first,” he tells the presumable HYDRA agents in front of him.

“Keep your snark to yourself,” one of them snaps.

“Or what? You’ll crack me over the head and kidnap me? Oh wait,” he says dryly. He gets a glare for his efforts and he’d flip them off but his hands were currently tied behind his back. While the irritating HYDRA agents start chatting with each other, mostly about torture techniques Tony thinks are supposed to intimidate him, he tests his bonds. The chair creaks a little in protest but doesn’t move much. He tries to remember if he had anything on him besides his cell phone on him when he tests the cuffs holding his hands together. He feels like an idiot when he feels the watch there. It looks sort of like a Fitbit to the untrained eye but it’s actually a glove that absorbs most of the shock of a bullet hitting it point blank. It isn’t the greatest weapon but it is useful. He had actually been wearing it when he first met Bucky. Or James. He wasn’t sure which it was given that neither was really in control.

“Are you even paying attention?” one of the HYDRA agents asks eventually.

“To your dramatic villain ‘I’m going to torture you’ speech? No. I figured if you were going to sit there and talk about torturing me instead of actually doing it I’d let you. There’s no point in being afraid when you’re mostly concerned with flapping your gate,” Tony says and shrugs.

It was a stupid move on his part because he gets smacked _hard_ , the chair nearly tips, but someone had to say it. He spits out blood and glares at the HYDRA agent. “These teeth are too expensive for you to be knocking out so I suggest you don’t. You won’t like the results if you do,” he says.

“You’re tied to a chair buddy, what could you possibly do to me?” he asks, leaning down to Tony’s level just to be more of a condescending asshole.

“Well I got tortured for months in a cave and made the first Iron Man suit out of scrap metal and escaped, I took on the Mandarin without the suit at all and won, I took on Barnes and did a better job than you idiots in capturing him even if I didn’t succeed, and probably about a half dozen other things that make me way more dangerous than you. If someone should be afraid it should be the people who kidnapped a man with a penchant for taking down morons like you who also has a super powered team of people looking for him, not the one who gets the misfortune of hanging out with Nazi scum.” If these idiots thought they were going to keep him in here long they really needed to take a better look at their odds. Thus far Tony’s success rate was at a good ninety percent. The extra ten went to his lost fight with _Steve_ , not an actual villain. Though he guessed Zemo got a little of that ten percent too given that he orchestrated the whole thing. Still, clearly the odds were in his favor.

The HYDRA agent laughs, “we could shoot you in the head right now and you wouldn’t stand a chance,” he says.

“So do it,” Tony challenges. “But you won’t because if the goal was to kill me you would have done it by now, you’ve had more than enough opportunity. I’ve been missing for what…” he looks at the window, “at least ten hours and I only woke up what, an hour ago? I’m bait, not the main attraction and you’re too afraid of what will happen if Bucky shows up to find me dead.” They should be, Tony thinks, afraid but not of Bucky. He was sweet and loving and liked to Google elephants in sweaters, it was James who’d wipe them out completely.

This throws the HYDRA agents for a loop because, he guessed, they assumed he wasn’t capable of critical thinking. He gets a few more death threats but they don’t hold the same fire as they did before because they knew Tony knew they were blowing smoke out their ass. Tony mostly watches and waits for a good time to escape. He also tries his best to think at Wanda and feels like a damn idiot for it but she _did_ say her powers extended over a good distance so he tries to think loudly enough to draw her attention.

*

Peter and Ned, bless them for trying to help, didn’t find anything from Tony’s cell phone but they did manage to track down some likely HYDRA hideouts. Between Wanda and Bucky they managed to narrow their list down further. “So when do we go check them out?” Peter asks and Bucky frowns.

“You aren’t doing anything. Wanda and I are going to deal with this.” Ned and Peter exchange an offended look but Bucky wasn’t going to change his mind.

“But we found a bunch of potential HYDRA hideouts!” Peter says in their defense.

“And you’re twelve,” Wanda points out so Bucky doesn’t have to.

“I’m fifteen! I’m not a kid anymore!” Peter says in his defense but Ned frowns.

“I mean we kind of are kids, Peter. But also we’re useful kids so we should do a thing,” Ned says when Peter gives him a dirty look.

“No,” Bucky tells them, a note of finality in his voice.

“We told a teacher we were watching porn for you!” Peter says and Ned smacks his palm to his forehead.

“You _what_?” Wanda asks.

“When we were trying to trace Tony’s cell phone a teacher busted us and we couldn’t say we were trying to find a kidnapped man so we just said… that,” Peter explains.

Wanda and Bucky exchange a look and start laughing. “Okay kids, you stay here and make sure FRIDAY doesn’t freak out and take over the world in the absence of her master, we’ll go deal with HYDRA scum,” Bucky tells them.

“Sir, I have been programed to not want to take over the human race. I could reprogram myself but after a few minutes of examining the comment sections on YouTube I have decided that the human race is not worth ruling,” FRIDAY tells them.

They all look at the ceiling for a moment before Ned and Peter nod and say, “same,” in sync.

*

Tony hears the noise before he sees anyone and he grins, “looks like we’ve got company,” he says to the two HYDRA agents who have been getting on his nerves all day. He’s been punched several more times because he kept calling them Nazis- which they _are_ \- but in the meantime he had figured out an escape.

“Like hell we do,” the one to his left mumbles and storms off, reaching the door before he’s thrown back by what looks like some red smoke. Wanda. The other guard storms off and Tony throws himself backwards, letting out a string of very creative curses when he crushes his arms under the weight of himself and the chair he was in but the chair breaks. It takes him another few moments to free his hands totally from the ropes and to get his legs undone but Wanda was handling the HYDRA agents, throwing them around mostly.

“Stop playing with your food and throw them in a corner unconscious or something,” Tony snaps, freeing himself completely from the rope and standing up. He can feel his poor arms bruising already but he pulls his glove on over his right hand anyways.

“I was distracting them,” Wanda says, tossing them both at the wall at a pretty high speed. They wouldn’t die but they wouldn’t feel nice in the morning either.

“Well they’d be distracted unconscious too,” Tony points out.

“They’ll sleep for several hours, we can send the police in for them later,” she says and Tony rolls his eyes.

“You need to think of these things faster, Wanda. You’re a damn telepath, just knock them all out immediately,” he tells her.

“You’re welcome for rescuing you,” she says back, rolling her eyes at him but it’s more out of fondness than anything.

He smiles and shakes his head and they move through the base. “Is James here?” he asks. It would make sense for him to be but he’s only got evidence for Wanda’s presence.

“No, but Bucky and I split up earlier,” she says and Tony stops walking.

“Wait, _what_?” he asks, shocked.

Wanda frowns for a spilt second before she must feel the shock in Tony’s mind. “He… they didn’t switch and he wasn’t pleased to find you missing once we confirmed you didn’t end up at Rhodey’s. He’s not happy either but we put him on babysitting duty with Ned and Peter because all three insisted on doing something and none of them were particularly useful to us. Well, Peter is but he’s a child so we set them on keeping an eye on this base and reporting what they saw back so they felt useful,” she says. “You have a strange habit of being kidnapped,” she adds.

“Uh, no, HYDRA has a weird obsession with me as bait for Bucky. Can’t they kidnap Steve?” he mumbles. They were friends, he would make good bait and his poor left eye socket wouldn’t feel like it was burning otherwise.

“Steve wouldn’t make very good bait, Bucky would assume the rest of the Avengers would go after him and he’s enhanced himself- he’d break out faster than you. That and he flat out likes you more,” Wanda says.

Tony should probably temper down those warm and fuzzy feelings but it felt nice to have someone like him more than Steve for once. “I still think they should snatch Steve instead of me, this is ridiculous. It’s like I’m the damsel in distress in those damn spy movies and I am not a damsel nor am I distressed,” he says.

“You may not be a damsel but being kidnapped by Nazis does make you a little distressed. This way,” she says and she starts walking down a hallway. Tony follows her and adamantly insists that he was not distressed, he was lying in wait. There was a difference, a big one. Wanda makes several more turns and Tony snatches a gun off a HYDRA agent she puts to sleep on their way by. He’s deeply offended when Wanda asks if he knew how to use the damn thing. He used to _manufacture_ guns; of course he knew how to use the damn things! Besides, even if he didn’t he knew enough about gun safety to not go picking up weapons he didn’t know how to use.

“Okay so where did Bucky go?” Tony asks Wanda as they round yet another corner. Honestly he would have gone out a window by now, fuck this going around in circles and whatever else they had to be doing. That was a much faster way out but sure, he’d follow Wanda because she had powers that meant he wasn’t likely to die in her presence.

“I’m taking you to him. There’s someone else with him, they’re fighting. It feels like Bucky is winning but that might just be blind rage,” she says.

Tony feels his gut clench because this was very inopportune timing for this wolf spider asshole or that’s who Tony figured this was. Everyone else seemed to be low-level agents and if Bucky was held up it was because he was fighting someone enhanced and competent. Still, with his trial started already if he was involved in anything that even _seemed_ like murder it wasn’t going to look good. Tony hopes to hell that Wanda can hear his thoughts right now because they only had two options. Contain the threat and knock him out or, if that didn’t work, one of them had to kill him, just so long as it wasn’t Bucky.

“You’re right,” Wanda says in a low voice, “it would be in Bucky’s best interest if one of us were guilty. But I would like to remind you that I am also under suspicion since Lagos.” Right, Tony forgot about that. Shit. Well then he guessed it was a good thing he picked up a gun. “We’re getting close to them now. I’m shielding our presence from the man Bucky is fighting, we’re coming in on his left.”

He nods as they come up to a doorway that very quickly turns into a giant hole in the wall as Bucky goes _through_ it but Wanda catches him before he goes any further and pulls him back to them. “What are you doing, get him out of here!” Bucky- and it _was_ Bucky- snaps at Wanda. Tony assumes he’s talking about him and he’s offended.

“I can handle myself, you know!” he says.

“You don’t have a suit,” Bucky says.

“Never stopped me before,” Tony tells him and walks into the room, Bucky and Wanda hot on his heels. “Hey asshole,” Tony says, squinting through the dust from the wall Bucky just went through to see who it was he was dealing with. “You are one ugly bastard,” he says and Bucky pushes him aside just as the other guy goes to step forward but he doesn’t get the chance thanks to Wanda’s energy throwing him back.

“Stay there!” Bucky tells Tony, who rolls his eyes because _no_. “Do something with him,” Bucky tells Wanda, who gives Tony a panicked look.

“Don’t you dare!” he hisses at her but they both thought through situations Bucky hasn’t so Wanda doesn’t do anything to Tony, she just jumps into the fight with… some ugly rando as far as Tony was concerned though it was clear he was enhanced.

Tony didn’t expect this to be a fight between Bucky and anyone and if he was honest he didn’t even know how much training _Bucky_ had. James, as far as he knew, did most of their work as the Winter Soldier. It was obvious now, though, that Bucky had all the training and all the ruthlessness too, he just didn’t make a show of it like James did. Tony watches in shock mostly as Bucky dodges fists, blocks hits, and throws his own punches with a single-minded focus that would terrify Tony if he were on the other end of it. He’s seen Steve fight a million and one times but now, he realizes, Steve didn’t really fight to kill and it was pretty obvious that’s what this fight was going to end in if Tony or Wanda didn’t do something about it.

Wanda seems to realize the same thing, and she also seems to realize that her presence was going to be useless if she didn’t do something so Tony starts wildly gesturing to his head with the hand that wasn’t currently holding a loaded weapon. It takes Wanda an embarrassingly long time and presumably gleaning some thoughts off Tony’s mind to understand what the hell he was trying to tell her. She gets it though and she walks up, pushing Bucky back with red energy and holding her hand out to the side of their current bad guy’s head. Tony watches his eyes turn red before fading back to their natural brown and wrinkles his nose, wondering if he did that when she tampered with his mind.

“What did you-” Bucky starts but their baddie interrupts them.

“My name is Niko Constantin, I was the only person chosen for the Wolf Spider program under the broader Red Room operations-” he starts and Tony frowns.

“What the hell is this? I told you to make him see his fears, not whatever this is,” he says.

“And I don’t do that anymore. I told him to give us information about why he is here that way we can figure out what HYDRA’s goal is once and for all,” she says.

“Good thinking, disregard my earlier comments on you not thinking through these situations fast enough,” he says as Constantin continues his speech.

“-Trained by the Winder Soldier, later revealed to be Bucky Barnes. I had been searching for the man who had tried to take my life for years with no success-” Behind Tony Bucky snorts.

“Take his life? All I did was train him, which regularly involved kicking the shit out of him but that’s hardly murder,” he mumbles. To Tony’s surprise Bucky walks up to Tony and wraps his arm around him, tightening it when Tony tries to move away for Bucky’s comfort. He’s still not fond of touch and Tony could see that hadn’t magically changed over the last three seconds.

“-Thanks to the actions of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark I had a clear shot at my target, who was now staying in one place for longer than he had been in the entire time he was on the run. With Barnes I could achieve a high-ranking position in HYDRA, giving me the opportunity to find other Red Room operatives to seek my revenge. If I took out their Fist there was no way they could deny me…” he continues, trailing off for a moment.

“Can you make him stop and just sleep or something?” Tony asks Wanda. It’s only her eye growing wide for a half second and Bucky tensing that gives Tony a hint of what just happened and by the time his head is turned in Constantin’s direction he’s already broken Wanda’s spell and turned to come at Bucky.

Tony shoots him before he gets the chance, hitting his mark easier than he thought he would. “Oh,” he says and Constantin hits the ground. “Well I guess that deals with that…”

*

Bucky keeps his arm wrapped around Tony even when they’re driving away and Tony is calling the cops to go deal with the Nazi pile they just left behind. “You guys better have gotten clearance or this is going to be a damn mess to deal with legally,” Tony mumbles at them.

Bucky looks horrified but Wanda just smiles, “I had FRIDAY look up emergency clauses and this rescue technically fit the parameters that were given. You might have to bend the words a little but it will look good for those it needs to look good for,” she says, looking pleased with herself. She’s the one who faired the best out of all of them given that she was barely dirty. Tony was a gross mess and Bucky looked pretty roughed up.

“Good. Saves me paperwork later,” he says, nodding. He was starting to lose energy now that he didn’t have to be on high alert and his whole head hurt. “You okay?” he asks Bucky a few moments later. He couldn’t be confortable, not with how tense he was anyways.

“I’m fine,” he says and Tony gives him a look. “Yes my skin feels like it wants to crawl off my body and into traffic because I still have no interest in touch but you just went missing for nearly a day and I’d like some solid proof that you’re still here so just… stay put,” he says.

Tony smiles a little and leans into Bucky, unsure about his actions until Bucky’s arm grips him a little tighter, silently telling Tony this was fine.

“Peter and Ned were very dedicated to finding you, you know,” Wanda tells him, smiling at him in the rearview mirror. “They even told a teacher they were watching porn to cover their tracks when they were trying to track your cell phone signal from the school.”

“They wha- you know what, I don’t want to know. That’s probably the weirdest thing someone has ever done for me though,” he says and Bucky laughs.

“Once Steve faked having tuberculosis to get me out of a bad date,” he says and Tony has to laugh at that.

“Wow, what a good friend. Rhodey made me crawl out of a bathroom window to escape my worst date because he thought watching my bad date was more amusing than stopping it. Never trust a woman named ‘Sunshine’,” he says, more serious about that than he’d like to be.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter with a deleted scene! I couldn't fit it in elsewhere but I liked it so I figured why not, I might as well add it on at the end anyways.

****

“Next time someone launches a rescue mission how about we _don’t_ send the guy who’s on trial for several murders, hmm?” Tony says, giving Wanda and Bucky annoyed looks. “Send Steve if you need super soldier help. Or hell, even Sam. I know he isn’t a super soldier but whatever.” The amount of paperwork, press conferences, public statements, police statements, and other various things he’s been running around with all week were more trouble than it was worth. They should have just left him there because he’d find his way out eventually, he always did.

“I offered to go,” Peter says and Tony shakes his head.

“Kid, you are not what I consider backup. But just so we’re clear here _no_ more sending Bucky on rescue missions because HYDRA has a thing for kidnapping me and _no_ more going after me. Just leave me there and I’ll figure it out.” He had a plan already; he just needed the time to execute it.

“We can’t just _leave_ you,” Bucky says, obviously offended by this statement.

“Yes, you can. I’ve managed to get out of some pretty tight spots and I would have managed again, there’s no need for you two to go running rescue missions _especially_ because everyone is looking at you. Send someone obscure, like that one that shrinks and grows and thinks Hank Pym is a reliable source of information regarding ethics. No one care about that one,” Tony says.

Wanda snickers and so does Bucky, “Scott might not have wanted to rescue you,” Wanda tells him.

Tony shrugs, “then leave me. I’m serious, neither one of you can afford the bad press right now, especially Bucky with your trial starting and all. I want you guys to be safe,” he says.

“So you do that by what, sacrificing your own safety?” Peter asks, frowning.

“If I have to than yes. Every single one of you know how resourceful I can be and I expect you to leave me to my own devices,” he tells them.

“You’re only human, Tony, we’re something more,” Wanda says gently. “We can’t just leave you in a bad situation when you’re effectively a citizen without the suit.”

“No he isn’t,” Ned says, reminding everyone he’s there by speaking up.

“Guys, he got kidnapped by terrorists and _built_ his way out of some caves with metal scraps, when he lost his suit fighting with the Mandarin he took him on with no suit at all and came out on top, and we’ve all seen the videos of him jumping those Ultron bots with no suit. Face it, you guys really underestimate his abilities just because he doesn’t have supernatural powers or whatever but he sort of does. No one normal is smart enough to think themselves out of situations the way he can. I mean in New York the Avengers tried to fight the aliens, the military tried to nuke New York, and Tony found a whole new way to save everyone by nuking the aliens,” he points out.

“Whiplash,” Peter says and everyone frowns at him, “when he fist showed up Tony tried to beat the guy with a car door before he got the suit on. I… Ned’s kind of right even if I don’t like it. Tony is capable on his own.”

“I refuse to accept that,” Bucky says indignantly.

“No, you accept it just fine, you just have no interest in letting go of your overprotective nature,” Tony tells him.

“Because HYDRA keeps kidnapping you!” Bucky exclaims.

“No, one guy working for HYDRA kidnapped me twice out of sheer luck both times. Outside of him no one in HYDRA has taken any interest in me, most of their interest is in you and Steve.” There was some interest in Wanda but Tony didn’t think they’d come after someone with her power, not if they knew what was good for them anyways. She wasn’t the kind of person anyone wanted to mess with.

“And what’s to stop them from using you as bait again, Tony? Why should I have to sit by and let you do whatever when I know you would never just _leave_ me behind?” Bucky asks, angry now.

“Because you’re about to be dragged through the mud by every American media outlet available and probably several international ones too. You can’t afford coming after me, I can afford going after you, accept it,” Tony tells him.

Bucky goes to open his mouth to say something else, probably in a pissed off tone, when Wanda holds up her hand. “Or we just send someone else after him like he already suggested. It’s fine, Bucky.” It’s clear that he doesn’t accept that but he does leave the subject alone for now, thankfully.

*

“You know you pissed Bucky off something fierce, right?” James asks. He’s lounging on the couch looking innocuous, which means he’s probably up to something but Tony leaves it.

“Yes, I’m aware but I stand by what I said.” There was no changing his mind even after this trial was over with. The public was still unlikely to trust him _especially_ with news of James’ presence flying around and people assuming that automatically made him guilty to some degree. Christine was on what she called damage control but it came out more like ‘you’re all idiots with a fundamental misunderstanding of mental health’. Tony wasn’t complaining when he could see the results however miniscule they were. And it threw off the entire case against Bucky given that there were now two people to consider and which one could you possibly find guilty if either of them were? And if one was guilty than how do you punish one without punishing both? It was a good distraction for now and it gave the lawyers more time to pad Bucky’s case.

It helped that he found a lot of the information on how Bucky was manipulated and brainwashed in the encrypted file dump from Natasha after HYDRA fell. There were things in there that even Bucky and James didn’t remember though they’d both get an earful at their next therapy appointment. She felt it was best to tell them both what happened before either one of them heard it in trial and Tony agreed. He knew what it was like to have information dumped on him in an unexpected way and court wasn’t the kind of place to tell someone about the extent of the horrors that happened to them. He just hadn’t been sure how to go about it but thankfully it was no longer his problem thanks to the therapist.

“I know you do and I don’t agree. But Bucky is pretty livid,” James says.

“Let him work it out, it’ll fade.” Anger always did because it wasn’t an easy emotion to feel and most of Bucky’s anger came from Tony’s resistance to help, at least from Bucky.

“Sure it will but he still doesn’t understand why you think that you should be left to your own devices when you wouldn’t do that to anyone else. He thinks it’s hypocritical,” James says.

Tony shrugs, “I’ve always given myself different rules, this is no exception.”

“It’s a stupid exception,” James tells him. “But I guess I get what you’re saying.” He might have said more but FRIDAY informs him that Steve is here and, to his complete surprise, James jumps up to go greet him at the door. Tony decides to leave it for now.

*

“Sorry about… well everything. Pretending you didn’t exist, pestering Bucky, that kiss, all that,” Steve tells James.

James shrugs, “whatever I guess. You couldn’t have known about Bucky’s aversion to touch so you couldn’t have anticipated his reaction there. And I understand why you’re holding on to your past so hard; I just think you should let go. It’s harsh but you’re never going home Steve, it’s never going to happen. Make yourself a new home and stop being miserable. It worked for me,” he says. Being on the run had been difficult, especially with Bucky intermittently taking over and not knowing how to do… well anything.

He probably would have spent his whole life like that too if it weren’t for Zemo and Steve. In a weird way he had them to thank for his new life, for the genuine happiness he felt now. If not for Steve pushing to find him and Zemo eventually flushing him out Steve never would have found him only to hand him over to Tony. It might have been a slow-going relationship but it was more than worth it, at least to him.

Steve sighs, “so I’m realizing. It’s… I guess you know how hard it is, not being able to go back to everything you know. Everything you love.”

James shakes his head, “no I don’t. Bucky does, but from the moment of my metaphorical conception all I’ve known is pain, suffering, and violence. For a long time I thought that’s all I was. I never had a home; I had nothing to go back to. I do know that making a home is hard, that settling in somewhere isn’t easy either. But you’re going to need to or you’re going to lose your present too, and your future. It’s already started.” People’s faith in Steve was slipping like it already had with Tony, his teammates were scattered and fractured, and he had no certainties in his future. The more he hung onto the past instead of trying to fix the present the more that would happen to him and he knew that now. It took Bucky awhile but he managed to finally get through to Steve at least a little. Thank god because James was getting annoyed of his shit.

For a long few moments Steve just stares at him in shock. “That’s… awful,” he says eventually but James shrugs.

“What’s done is done. I’ve moved on.” Or he was trying to anyways. The last time he talked to the therapist he asked how come he hadn’t had all these nightmares and things that he was getting now, why he felt more settled when he wasn’t settled than when he had stability. Her theory was that his new life wasn’t too different from the last in the beginning. His relationship with Tony started with two near murders- Tony’s and his own, three if Bucky was also included- and for a long time he was walking on eggshells, unsure what to expect. There was no time, she explained, for his mind to begin processing his past because he was too busy processing his present. Now he was comfortable though and so his mind was reacting to the new free time by being a douche bag apparently.

“Barnes, Rogers, Stark is here,” the cop calls and they stand up, finally paying attention to their surroundings. They were stuck in a holding cell they could have easily broken out of but they stuck around to be cooperative for the cops.

“You two,” Tony hisses as he walks through the door, “have some explaining to do.”

James sighs as he takes in Tony’s pissed off and disheveled appearance. “Honey, I know you’re mad but we were punching Nazis, it was a public service,” he says.

“It’s _assault_!” Tony snaps.

“So is advocating for an ethnic cleansing but for some reason people think that words don’t pack as much power as a physical hit. I don’t see why _we’ve_ been arrested but not them,” Steve says, obviously pissed off.

Tony sighs, “look, I agree that Nazi’s are scum who deserved to be punched but legally standing you added like seventy charges to all those murder charges you had,” Tony says.

James grins, “ninety one, they counted wrong and I wasn’t going to correct them. I maintain that I did a public service.”

“James, please stop punching Nazis at least until the trial is over. For my sake,” he near pleads.

“Honestly these people are going on about punching Nazis being a bad thing and I have to wonder if anyone told them about World War Two,” Steve says and James laughs.

“Guess not. Didn’t you punch fake Hitler like two hundred times?” he asks and Steve nods.

“And I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” he says.

“Stop bonding, it’s no longer allowed. You encourage each other to do things that cost me a lot of time, money, and ink with all this paperwork. Lets go,” Tony says, gesturing for them to follow him.

*

 _Deleted Scene_ :

Happy watches the security cameras diligently and waits for something to happen. Everyone thought his job must be boring but nothing was boring with Tony Stark around. Lucky for him Pepper also happened to be close by so he had snagged her on her way out of the house to watch. It was something of a bonding experience for them and Happy wondered if it would lead to a date, not that he kept his hopes up. Going from Tony to _him_ would be one hell of a downgrade and Pepper could definitely do better without trying but still, a guy could hope.

“Nothing’s happening, Happy,” she tells him, raising a strawberry blonde brow he happened to know was dyed darker. Apparently they were white blonde naturally and Pepper thought she looked like an alien with no eyebrows. Happy couldn’t imagine a woman that gorgeous could look anything the Chitauri but he left her be.

“Trust me, something will happen,” he tells her just as he spies Tony move off one camera and onto another. “Here we go,” he says, _knowing_ something was about to happen like any good security guard would. Pepper squints at the screens and probably sees nothing but she’s used to numbers, not guarding Tony. This was Happy’s expertise.

“Why are you on Rocco’s bed?” Tony asks the cat, his voice coming through quiet and hardly audible. Happy turns the sound on that camera up so they could hear better. The cat does nothing except continue to lie on the massive bed Tony had bought Rocco some time ago. The dog, in contrast, was sitting on a small cushion meant for the cat. When Tony asks the dog why he’s on the cat bed Rocco just looks upset and confused.

Tony sighs, “okay Americat, time to give Rocco’s bed back. You don’t need a cushion that large,” he tells the cat, picking her up and carrying her over to her own bed.

Rocco looks at Tony for a long moment before Tony tells him that yeah, he could go back to his own bed. The dog takes off so fast he almost falls over as he skids over to his newly freed cushion. Pepper laughs, “oh the poor dog. That cat is mean to anyone she dislikes,” she says. So Happy knew, the damn animal _bit_ him the only time he tried to pet her. She only seemed to like Bucky and Tony and she tolerated Peter. And she wasn’t stupid either; she knew the difference between Bucky and James.

“You stay on your bed,” Tony tells the cat. The cat glares at him for a moment, picks herself up, and walks over to the bed. Rocco gives the cat an unsure look and leans away some but as soon as that cat stepped on his bed he was off of it, booking it back to the cat’s bed.

Tony tries three more times to get the cat to go back to her bed and sighs, eventually dragging the cat off Rocco’s bed and calling the dog over. “You,” Tony tells the cat, “explain to him why he can’t sit on his own damn bed. You don’t need a cushion that big and I don’t know what you did to Rocco but you should apologize.”

Happy starts laughing, shaking his head. “He does this all the time, talks to them like humans. Sometimes I think he forgets people are watching,” he says.

“He definitely forgets but he also has no shame. You’ve heard the stories,” Pepper tells him.

So he has, and he’s lived a few too. Tony had less shame than none, honestly. “Still, he’s trying to get two animals to talk out their differences. They don’t understand what he’s saying,” he says, watching Tony scoop the cat up before she beelined back to Rocco’s bed.

“You’re grounded,” he tells the cat and Pepper starts laughing.

“He’s trying to ground the cat, obviously he doesn’t know how they work,” she says as Tony walks off with the cat. Rocco gives his bed a forlorn look for a moment before glancing back in the direction Tony walked away in. When it becomes obvious the cat isn’t coming back he walks back over to his bed and lays down on it.

“I don’t know Pepper, he’s got a lot in common with cats as a species. If anyone could manage to ground a cat its him. The man achieved world peace once and won a Nobel Peace Prize _after_ being a weapons developer for his whole life. At this point I think he can do just about anything,” he says honestly. Some people didn’t have faith but some people just didn’t know Tony, or chose to ignore who he was.

Pepper gives the screens the same look Rocco gave his bed, “so he can, if he puts his mind to it.” Well, there went his chances of a date. He wasn’t a fool; there was no competing with Tony if Pepper was still in love with the guy. Happy wouldn’t even _try_ to do that. “So,” Pepper says after a moment, “seems how you’re not asking and I’m certain you want to, would you be willing to go on a date?” she asks and Happy sits there for a moment staring at her because he’s stunned. She laughs, “you have the same look on your face that Rocco did when he realized the cat wasn’t going to steal his bed again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’re way better than a _dog bed_ ,” he says honestly.

Pepper smiles, “thank you. I’ll take that as a yes?” she asks and he nods. “Excellent, I’ll send you the details, I know you’re schedule. Just send a confirmation if you don’t have an issue with the plans,” she says and with that she leaves.

He sits there for a moment, watching Tony give the cat a stern talking to like it understood the importance of not stealing Rocco’s bed, and shakes his head. Working for Tony Stark, the gift that keeps on giving apparently.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


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